Concord Cemetery
Kenney, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded by the Concord Christian church in 1870, Concord Cemetery (also known as the Concord Church Cemetery) sits on 3.4 acres of land in northern Austin County and is part of the Concord Christian Church. The earliest known grave is that of Dr. Buell Eastman (1807-1870), a confederate veteran and early Austin County resident, who died on December 2, 1870. John Wesley Collins (1804-1882), an early settler to the area and one of the founders of the Concord Cemetery, is buried here along with his family. Other pioneer families such as Creath, Bouldin, Dabney, Eastman and McNutt are buried at this historic cemetery and are early settlers to the area. The McNutts buried at Concord Cemetery are descendants of Robert McNutt who came to Texas in 1834 after receiving headright grants in Austin and Williamson counties; he and his family settled in Austin County. During the battle of San Jacinto, McNutt was placed in command of the baggage guard and ammunition, and was responsible for the wounded and sick. The last known burial occurred in 1973 when Arthur Guy McNutt was buried beside his wife. The landscape of the cemetery is traditional with a variety of gravestone materials and inscriptions. Some gravestones indicate military service or involvement with fraternal organizations, such as civil war veterans Japhet Collins and Robert A. Husk and WWI veterans Monroe Terrell Lynn and Horace Haley McNutt. Over the years, the cemetery became overrun by brush and some of the tombstones were lost. In 2010, the cemetery was cleared by a volunteer group, which included many descendants of buried family members.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the farmland of northern Austin County, Concord Cemetery opened in 1870 as the burial ground of the Concord Christian Church, its earliest grave holding a Confederate veteran and early settler. Around it gathered the pioneer families—Collins, Creath, McNutt and others—who had reached Texas in the 1830s, one of them serving with the baggage guard at San Jacinto. Confederate, Civil War and World War I veterans lie beneath its varied stones, a record of a rural community across a century of life. After decades of neglect, descendants cleared the overgrown grounds in 2010.
Why it matters
Rural cemeteries like Concord preserve the names of the ordinary settler families who built Texas, linking one community to the Republic, the Civil War, and the World Wars.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Northern Austin County in the mid-nineteenth century was frontier Texas—prairie and farmland settled by pioneer families who had come, many of them, in the heady years of the Texas Republic in the 1830s. These were people who had staked their futures on cheap land grants and hard work, and who put down roots one homestead, one church, and one grave at a time. Concord Cemetery, founded in 1870 by the Concord Christian Church, is the resting place those roots eventually required.
The cemetery opens in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and its very first grave carries the mark of that conflict. This was Reconstruction-era Texas, a place still absorbing the war's losses even as it kept pushing westward and filling in. A country churchyard begun in 1870 sits at the meeting point of two great eras: the frontier settlement that came before and the long agricultural life of the community that would follow for a century.
Rural cemeteries like this were rarely just burial grounds. Tied to a church and worked by the same handful of families for generations, they were where a scattered farming community became a single people, bound together by shared ground and shared names.
People & events
The earliest known grave belongs to Dr. Buell Eastman, born in 1807, a Confederate veteran and early Austin County resident who died in December 1870—the founding burial that opened the ground. Around him gathered the pioneer families whose names recur across the cemetery: Creath, Bouldin, Dabney, Eastman, McNutt, and more, the settlers who had reached this corner of Texas in its early days.
Among the founders was John Wesley Collins, born in 1804, an early settler who helped establish the cemetery and lies buried here with his family. But the deepest reach into Texas history runs through the McNutts. They descend from Robert McNutt, who came to Texas in 1834—before the Republic even existed—after receiving headright land grants, and settled his family in Austin County. At the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive fight that won Texas its independence, McNutt was given charge of the baggage guard and the ammunition and made responsible for the wounded and the sick: not the glory of the front line, but the essential, trusted work of keeping an army supplied and its casualties cared for.
The stones themselves record a community's service across generations—Civil War veterans among them Japhet Collins and Robert A. Husk, and World War I veterans Monroe Terrell Lynn and Horace Haley McNutt, some markers noting fraternal-society membership as well. The last known burial came in 1973, when Arthur Guy McNutt was laid to rest beside his wife, closing a century of interments. By then the grounds had grown wild, brush swallowing the stones, until 2010, when a volunteer group—many of them descendants of the very families buried there—came and cleared it.
Its place in the American story
A rural cemetery is one of the most honest historical documents America has. It records not the famous but the ordinary—the farmers, doctors, and settler families who actually built a place—and it does so in stone, name by name. Concord Cemetery preserves the pioneer families of northern Austin County exactly as they lived: together, across generations, in one shared patch of Texas earth.
What makes this ground remarkable is the sweep of American history compressed into a few acres. Through Robert McNutt, it touches the Battle of San Jacinto and the birth of the Texas Republic in 1836. Through its founding grave and other veterans, it holds the Civil War. Through later stones, it reaches the First World War. One country churchyard thus threads together the Republic, the Union's great rupture, and the nation's emergence onto the world stage—the whole arc of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America, told through the people of a single farming community.
The 2010 clearing is its own kind of American story. Across the country, overgrown and forgotten cemeteries are being rescued by descendants determined that their ancestors' names not be lost to brush and time. That act of care—kin returning to reclaim their own dead—is how ordinary families keep their history alive when no monument or museum will do it for them.
If you visit
Come to Concord as you would to any old country cemetery: quietly, and ready to read. The 3.4 acres hold a traditional Texas burial landscape, with gravestones of varied materials and styles set among the farmland of northern Austin County. Walk slowly and let the recurring surnames—Collins, Creath, McNutt, Eastman—reveal how a handful of intermarried pioneer families anchored this community for a hundred years.
Look closely at the stones for the small carved signs of a life's commitments: emblems of military service and the symbols of fraternal organizations. Somewhere here lies the cemetery's oldest grave, from 1870, and the veterans of three American conflicts rest under these same trees. Reading the dates in sequence, you can feel the century pass, from the Republic-era generation to the last burial in 1973.
Remember as you go that what you're able to see at all is the fruit of the 2010 volunteer effort, when descendants pushed back the brush that had claimed the grounds. That gives a visit here a particular feeling—of a place loved back into legibility. It fits naturally into a back-roads drive through rural Austin County, the kind of quiet stop where the whole history of a region is spelled out in weathered stone for anyone willing to slow down and read it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Buell Eastman
- · John Wesley Collins
- · Robert McNutt
Themes & tags
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