Cypress Creek Cemetery
Leakey, Real County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established in the 1870s, Cypress Creek Cemetery served a scattered community of pioneers along Cypress Creek in what was then Bandera County before the founding of nearby Leakey in Edwards County. The land on this site belonged to settler John Bunyan Stidham, Sr., whose son, John Bunyan Stidham, Jr., gave land for a school nearby. Legend surrounds this graveyard. The earliest grave in the cemetery is believed to be that of four-year-old James Beauford Bybee (1875-1879). His burial site is marked by two flat rocks in the ground according to Bybee family practice. Records indicate that the second burial is that of Polly A. Smart (1847-1881). Also buried here is Laura (Turner) Stidham, wife of John Bunyan Stidham, Jr. She and their son Alonzo (b. 1877) were killed when a tornado destroyed their home in 1927. They were buried in a common grave marked only with stones. The graves of several infants and children bear witness to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. Ten known veterans of U. S. and foreign conflicts are interred here. The cemetery contains more than 75 marked and many unmarked graves. Still in use in 1998, Cypress Creek Cemetery continues to serve the descendants of the pioneer settlers of Real County. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Begun in the 1870s, Cypress Creek Cemetery served a scattered community of pioneers along Cypress Creek before the town of Leakey existed, on land belonging to settler John Bunyan Stidham, Sr. Its earliest graves reach back to the late 1870s, and its markers tell hard stories, including Laura Stidham and her young son Alonzo, killed when a tornado destroyed their home in 1927 and buried together beneath plain stones. More than seventy-five marked graves, many unmarked ones, and ten veterans lie among the descendants of the region's first families.
Why it matters
The graveyard preserves the memory of the pioneer families who first settled the Texas Hill Country, and the natural disasters and hardships that shaped their lives.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the first graves were opened along Cypress Creek in the 1870s, this stretch of the Texas Hill Country was still frontier, and the land itself lay in what was then Bandera County, before nearby Leakey took shape and county lines were redrawn into present-day Real County. Settlement was thin and scattered, a matter of individual families staking claims along a reliable creek.
Water dictated where people lived, and Cypress Creek gave its name to both the community and its burying ground. Life here meant self-reliance: raising food and stock, schooling children close to home, and burying the dead on land a neighbor had set aside.
That a graveyard and, soon after, a nearby school grew up together tells you what a dispersed pioneer community prized, the means to educate the living and to honor the dead, both established before formal towns existed to provide them.
People & events
The land belonged to settler John Bunyan Stidham, Sr., while his son of the same name gave ground for a school nearby, a family threaded through the community's institutions. The earliest grave is believed to be that of four-year-old James Beauford Bybee, who died in 1879 and whose resting place is marked, in his family's custom, by two flat rocks set in the ground. The second burial is recorded as that of Polly A. Smart.
The cemetery also holds one of the region's most quietly devastating stories. Laura Stidham, wife of the younger John Bunyan Stidham, and her son Alonzo, who had been born in 1877, were killed together when a tornado destroyed their home in 1927. They were laid in a common grave marked only with stones.
Around them lie several infants and children, plain evidence of how unforgiving pioneer life could be, along with ten known veterans of American and foreign conflicts.
Its place in the American story
This modest graveyard, with its more than seventy-five marked graves and many unmarked ones, embodies a pattern repeated across the settling West: the community cemetery as the first and most durable civic record a people leaves. Long before courthouses and incorporated towns, it was the burying ground that fixed a scattered settlement to a specific place.
The folk practices preserved here, a child's grave marked by two flat stones, a mother and son beneath a common cairn, connect this spot to the wider American story of how ordinary families memorialized their dead with whatever the land and their traditions provided.
The presence of veterans of several conflicts ties this remote creek to the nation's larger history, a reminder that even the most isolated pioneer communities sent their sons into America's wars and welcomed them home to rest.
If you visit
This is a working cemetery still serving the descendants of the families who first settled the area, so approach it as a living place rather than a relic. The reward is in the details: look for the oldest graves marked simply with stones rather than carved monuments, a reminder that grief here often outran the means to memorialize it.
Seek out the plain markers that speak of children and infants, and let the span of dates carry you from the frontier decades into the twentieth century. The setting along Cypress Creek still evokes the scattered, water-bound community that began here.
Quiet and out of the way, it suits a traveler willing to slow down and read a landscape through its names. Pair it with a broader ramble through the Hill Country's back roads, where small historic sites like this one hold more story than their size lets on.
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
- · John Bunyan Stidham, Sr.
- · John Bunyan Stidham, Jr.
- · Laura Stidham
Themes & tags
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