City Cemetery
Liberty, Liberty County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1848, eleven years after Liberty was incorporated, the town's trustees appointed a committee to select a suitable location for a community burial ground. Subsequently, this four-acre tract of land was chosen as the City Cemetery. Local leaders made no provisions for selling burial plots, so families were allowed to select the sites of their choice, often marking them with cypress or iron pickets. Although the graveyard contains numerous unmarked graves, the earliest known burial, that of four-year-old Caroline A. Lund, took place in August 1850. Many pioneer citizens of Liberty are buried here, as are a number of war veterans, including Franklin Hardin (1803-1878) and Cornelius de Vore (1819-1883), who participated in the battle of San Jacinto. Others buried in City Cemetery include E.B. Pickett (1823-1882), an early Texas statesman who served as president of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875. By 1946, crowded conditions in this graveyard necessitated the opening of a new cemetery southeast of town. Although still in use, burials at this site now are limited to the families of persons already interred here. The gravesites are maintained by the Liberty Cemetery Association. (1983) Historic Texas Cemetery medallion attached to post.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1848 the trustees of Liberty—one of Texas's oldest towns—set aside this four-acre tract as a community burial ground, where families staked out plots marked with cypress or iron pickets. The earliest known burial was four-year-old Caroline A. Lund in 1850, and among the many pioneers here lie San Jacinto veterans Franklin Hardin and Cornelius de Vore and statesman E. B. Pickett, president of the 1875 Texas Constitutional Convention. Crowding led to a new cemetery in 1946, though burials continue for established families.
Why it matters
The cemetery gathers the founders, veterans, and statesmen who built one of Texas's earliest towns into a single ground of civic memory.
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Related people
- · Franklin Hardin
- · Cornelius de Vore
- · E. B. Pickett
- · Caroline A. Lund
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
- · Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cornelius De Vore
Liberty, TX
Cornelius De Vore, born in New Orleans in 1819, was a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto — the decisive 1836 clash in which Sam Houston's small army routed Santa Anna and secured Texas independence. Men like De Vore, many of them young and newly arrived, made up the citizen force that fought in that brief but pivotal campaign. His grave in Liberty County honors one of the founding generation of the Republic of Texas.
Milton Ashley Hardin
Liberty, TX
Milton Ashley Hardin came to the Texas frontier as a boy in 1826 and, in 1835, fought at the Battle of Concepcion and the Siege of Bexar during the struggle for Texas independence, earning a land grant. He later sold the tract that became the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation before moving on to North Central Texas.
Seven Pines
Liberty, TX
Benjamin Franklin Hardin arrived in the Atascosito District of Mexican Texas in 1826 and became surveyor of the district in 1834. As a member of the Liberty Volunteers he fought at Concepcion, the Siege of Bexar, and the decisive Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas independence, then built a home on this site in 1839. The place, later known as Seven Pines, stayed in the Hardin family for four generations, and in 1858 the legislature created Hardin County in the family's honor.
Captain William M. Logan
Liberty, TX
Born in North Carolina in 1802, William M. Logan moved to Liberty in 1832 and, four years later, organized and commanded a company of Texas volunteers at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He went on to serve as Liberty County's first sheriff before his death in Houston in 1839. His short life spanned the birth of the Republic of Texas.