Davis Cemetery
Grapeland, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established Ca. 1862 Historic Texas Cemetery - 2009
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established around 1862, this Houston County burial ground took root in the heart of the Civil War, when East Texas was a Confederate homefront far from the fighting but bound up in its losses. Set among the farms and pine woods of Grapeland, it reflects the settlement of the region by families who had pushed into East Texas in the antebellum decades. Its Historic Texas Cemetery designation preserves that link to the war years.
Why it matters
A cemetery dating to 1862 anchors its community to the Civil War era, a reminder of how the conflict touched even the quiet rural corners of Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
McCarter Cemetery
Crockett, TX
John McCarter was born in Pennsylvania in 1813 and came to Texas in 1832, four years before the Republic itself was born, settling with his wife Jane and their nine children on a farmstead in Houston County. Like many pioneer families, they set aside a corner of their land as a burial ground, and John became its first occupant when he died in 1895. In 1907 Jane formally deeded the plot to the surrounding community, tying the graveyard to the schoolhouse settlement that grew up nearby. Descendants still gather each year to tend the graves.
Chaffin Cemetery
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Chaffin Cemetery was established in the 1840s, in the earliest years of Anglo settlement in Houston County, Texas. Burial grounds like this were often among the first permanent marks a frontier community left on the land. It was designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.
Grounds Cemetery
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George and Catherine Grounds settled this part of East Texas around 1829, near the earlier arrival of Catherine's brother Joseph R. Rice. The cemetery was established in 1860 with George's burial and legally set aside by 1883, and it holds mostly Grounds family members. George's original red sandstone marker was replaced with granite in 1993, but the graveyard remains a representative example of the historic family burying grounds of the region.
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