Clear Creek Cemetery
Oakland, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Clear Creek Community formed in the 1850s near the route of the “Old Gonzales Road,” which ran from San Felipe though Columbus, Oakland and Gonzales on to San Antonio. A church organized in Clear Creek in the 1850s. In 1860, Edward M. Glenn officially deeded land to Methodist Episcopal Church South Trustees Zachariah Payne, O. B. Crenshaw and John Tooke. The cemetery that grew up around the Clear Creek Church became the main burial ground for the area through the 1880s. Records indicate that several burials had already taken place at the site prior to the cemetery’s formal establishment. Among the earliest burials are J.C.C. Barnett, son of Joseph and Mary Carnett; Cynthia Cleveland, wife of Horatio Johnson Cleveland; and Martha Miles Burgess, all interred in the 1850s. When the railroad came to nearby Weimar in 1873, the population in the Clear Creek area began to decline. However, even though Clear Creek Church was torn down and used to build a new church in Oakland in 1886, families continued to use the Clear Creek cemetery for several years. The last recorded burial was that of John Anderson Lamkin, who died in 1929. More than a dozen veterans of the Civil War are buried here, as are members of the 19th century fraternal rganization the Sons of Temperance. Notable features include false crypts and iron and wooden fences for family plots. Grave markers are made of marble or granite, with some of local sandstone quarried from Clear Creek. The Clear Creek Cemetery Association formed in 2007 to perpetuate the care and preservation of the cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2007 Marker Dedication - 2009
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Clear Creek community took root in the 1850s along the Old Gonzales Road, the wagon route linking San Felipe, Columbus, and San Antonio. A Methodist church organized there, and the burial ground that grew beside it served the area for decades, holding more than a dozen Civil War veterans and members of the Sons of Temperance among its marble, granite, and local sandstone markers. When the railroad reached nearby Weimar in 1873, the community faded, but families kept returning to the cemetery, whose last recorded burial came in 1929.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a quiet record of a Texas farming community's rise and decline, tracing how the coming of the railroad reshaped where nineteenth-century Texans lived and died.
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