Cornith Cemetery
Houston County, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Corinth Cemetery stands as a reminder of Houston County's pioneer heritage. It is the last remaining evidence of several Houston County settlements, including Corinth, a community that built up near a Methodist Episcopal church and school in the late 1850s. The cemetery has served as a final resting place for residents of Corinth, Old Randolph, Old Zion, Kennard and Center Hill. Although the oldest documented grave dates to 1864, burials probably occurred here as early as the 1850s. The Corinth Cemetery Association has cared for the graveyard since the 1940s.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Corinth Cemetery is the last physical trace of several vanished Houston County settlements, among them Corinth, a community that gathered in the late 1850s around a Methodist church and school. The graveyard became the final resting place for residents of Corinth, Old Randolph, Old Zion, Kennard, and Center Hill, with its oldest documented grave dating to 1864. The Corinth Cemetery Association has tended the grounds since the 1940s.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of a cluster of pioneer communities that have otherwise disappeared, a quiet record of Houston County's earliest settlement.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Randolph Community
Kennard, TX
In 1838, during the days of the Republic of Texas, Cyrus Halbert Randolph founded this community along the San Felipe de Austin–Nacogdoches mail route, one of the vital overland links stitching together frontier East Texas. A public servant many times over, Randolph helped the settlement grow a school, a post office, and a cluster of stores and shops. When Randolph lost its 1860 bid to take the county seat from Crockett, the town slowly faded, its post office closing for good in 1881.
Community of Coltharp
Houston County, TX
By the late 1850s Eli Coltharp had settled beside Cochina Bayou, opening a store and post office along the stage route west of Nacogdoches. The little farm community of Coltharp Hill soon boasted a gin, gristmill, and shops, and its school building doubled as a Masonic lodge. When the railroad passed it by and a sawmill opened nearby in 1901, farming faded and the post office closed by 1909.
Hagerville Community
Houston County, TX
Kentuckian James Henry Hager brought his family to Texas in the 1840s and set up a blacksmith shop and mill in Houston County, beside the busy Nacogdoches-to-Navasota stage and mail road. His son opened a post office in 1891 and named the settlement Hagerville, and another son donated land for a schoolhouse that doubled as a church. As residents drifted toward the sawmills the post office closed in 1905, though the community kept its name.
Pioneer Settlers of Coltharp
Houston County, TX
Settled in the 1850s, Coltharp grew into one of Houston County's notable early communities, with a schoolhouse, Masonic lodge, church, stores, and the farms of pioneer families like the Coltharps, Conners, and Greggs. Its economy shifted from cotton and corn to timber in the late 1880s. But when the railroad passed it by, residents drifted off to nearby sawmill towns, and by 1925 the community had faded.