HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Bryan City Cemetery

Bryan, Brazos County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Established on June 13, 1868, three years after the townsite of Bryan was dedicated. Land for the graveyard--20 acres then on the northern edge of Bryan--was sold to the city for $100 by landowner J.C. Hubert. The first addition of land was made June 15, 1915; the area is now 48 acres. Many prominent early citizens are buried here. The City Cemetery Advisory Board and the Bryan Cemetery Association (organized November 30, 1920) serve in an advisory capacity in the operation of the cemetery.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Bryan City Cemetery was established in June 1868, three years after the townsite of Bryan was laid out along the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Landowner J. C. Hubert sold the original twenty acres to the city for $100, and the grounds have since grown to some 48 acres. Many of Bryan's prominent early citizens rest here, tended over the years by a city board and a cemetery association organized in 1920.

Why it matters

The cemetery is a founding-era record of a railroad town, holding the pioneers who built one of Central Texas's early commercial centers.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • Β· J. C. Hubert

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Isom Palmer

Bryan, TX

Isom Palmer β€” a son of the frontier firebrand Martin 'Ringtail Panther' Parmer β€” came to Texas with his family in 1825 and took part in the 1826 Fredonian Rebellion near Nacogdoches. He fought under Capt. John M. Bradley at the Siege of Bexar in 1835 and served as sergeant-at-arms at the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence, later settling in Brazos County in the early 1870s.

Town Named for William Joel Bryan

Bryan, TX

William Joel Bryan came to Texas in 1831 as a grandson of Moses Austin and nephew of Stephen F. Austin, placing him at the center of the family that founded Anglo Texas. He fought in the 1835 Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution and, upon Stephen F. Austin's death in 1836, inherited leadership of the influential Austin-Bryan clan. A lifelong planter near Peach Point, he later donated the land for the town of Bryan, which became the seat of Brazos County in 1866.

Brazos County

Bryan, TX

Carved from Washington County in 1841 as part of Stephen F. Austin's colony, this county was first called Navasota with its seat at Boonville, then renamed Brazos in 1842. Through the Civil War, Millican flourished as the end of the railroad from Houston, but when the line pushed north Bryan became the county seat in 1866. The 1876 opening of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas β€” now Texas A&M β€” drew College Station into being around it.

Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church

Bryan, TX

This parish grew from Episcopal services held in nearby Millican in 1864, but a yellow fever epidemic drove the mission to relocate to Bryan in 1867, where a parish formed that same year. Its first church was consecrated in 1868, and a new sanctuary opened at this location in 1914. Across a century and a quarter, Saint Andrew's became a fixture of Bryan's community life.