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Civil WarReconstruction & Gilded Age

Brushy Cemetery

Leon County, Leon County, Texas

Marker Inscription

The family of George Washington and Elizabeth Yarborough, originally from South Carolina, came to Texas from Alabama in the 1850s and settled in eastern Leon County. Their five sons served the Confederate cause during the Civil War. Two of them, Wade Hamption (1834-1905) and William Burns (1840-1913) Yarborough, moved to the Brushy area and purchased 186 acres here in 1883. William worked the land to pay it off while Wade was forced to move away for a time due to illness. Wade did set aside three acres for a church and cemetery and returned to minister to the Primitive Baptist Congregation in a one-room sanctuary that also served as a school. The church building was lost to a fire in the 1920s.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

The Yarborough family left South Carolina by way of Alabama and settled in eastern Leon County in the 1850s, and their five sons all served the Confederacy during the Civil War. Two brothers, Wade Hampton and William Burns Yarborough, bought 186 acres in the Brushy area in 1883, where Wade set aside three acres for a Primitive Baptist church and cemetery that doubled as a one-room school. Fire claimed the sanctuary in the 1920s, but the burial ground endured.

Why it matters

The marker traces a Southern family's migration west and their absorption into the Confederate cause, a pattern repeated across countless Texas frontier communities.

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Related people

  • · Wade Hampton Yarborough
  • · William Burns Yarborough
  • · George Washington Yarborough

Related events

  • · Civil War

Themes & tags

Civil WarMemorial

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