Chappel Cemetery
Cherokee, San Saba County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Chappel, established in the 1850s, is one of San Saba County's earliest settlements. The land for this cemetery is part of 16-1/2 acres donated by Joab B. Harrell (1814-1893) that he formally deeded in 1886 to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Harrell, the county's first Chief Justice, had buried his own son at this site some fifteen years earlier. The M.E. Church, a school and store served as the center of this community. This burial ground chronicles the lives of pioneers and families that are Chappel's heritage. The Chappel Cemetery Association was established in 1976 to ensure the site's preservation and perpetual care. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chappel, one of San Saba County's earliest settlements, dates to the 1850s, and this burial ground grew from land donated by Joab B. Harrell, the county's first Chief Justice, who had buried his own son here around 1871 before formally deeding the tract to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1886. A church, school, and store once made Chappel a community center. The graves chronicle the pioneers and families who settled this frontier corner of Central Texas.
Why it matters
Rural cemeteries like Chappel are among the most durable records of early settlement, preserving the names and family ties of pioneers whose communities have otherwise faded.
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Related people
- · Joab B. Harrell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Harris Cemetery
San Saba, TX
Harris Cemetery was already in use by 1874, when A.J. and Ellen Crawford deeded five acres to local trustees for a burial ground, school, and place of worship. Its oldest marked grave belongs to N.M. Baker, born in 1819, and one relocated 1868 stone recalls a family whose remains were lost to a flood. Cared for by an association, the site endures as a tangible record of San Saba County's earliest settlers.
San Saba Lodge No. 225, A. F. & A. M.
San Saba, TX
Freemasonry ran through the founding of San Saba County, whose organizers were largely Masons; when the first courthouse rose in 1857, the county let them meet there. San Saba Lodge No. 225 received its charter in 1859, drawing county officials, Texas Rangers, and frontier settlers, and its members promptly built a combined school and lodge hall—seeding the San Saba Masonic College chartered in 1863. Financial strain during Reconstruction and a damaging association with the vigilante 'San Saba Mob' led the lodge to surrender its charter in 1882.
Nix
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Settlers reached this spot along the Fort Phantom Hill Road in the 1860s and founded Nix, where Harvey Wallace opened a store in 1875 and his wife Elizabeth served as first postmaster. The village grew with a cotton gin, blacksmiths, stores, and a school, and later leaned on rock quarries and cedar yards. After absorbing neighboring schools, Nix consolidated with Lampasas in 1952, and its old schoolhouse became a community center.
Baby Head Cemetery
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Local tradition holds that Baby Head Mountain took its grim name in the 1850s, after a child killed in an Indian raid was left on its slopes. A pioneer community grew up nearby in the 1870s, taking the same name, with homes, farms, and businesses. Today the cemetery — whose oldest documented grave is that of a child who died on New Year's Day 1884 — is the community's last physical trace.