Davis Cemetery
Larue, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground, named for the pioneering Davis family, has served this rural section of Henderson County since the mid-1800s. It was established in the early 1870s on property deeded by J.J. Deupree in 1883. The Baxter community, officially established by 1901 when it became a station for the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, is particularly represented here. Shortly after its founding, the community had a post office, stores, churches, cotton gins and a school. John L. Davis (d. 1873) came to Texas with his wife, Dorcas (Holland) (d. 1874), and their family by 1850. They settled in Henderson County before the Civil War. One of their sons, Archibald Mallard Davis, served as Henderson County sheriff. Others buried here include school trustee and community leader Willie E. Johnson (d. 1960); constable Morton G. Jepson (d. 1941); and Henderson County chief justice Samuel Tyne Owen (d. 1856), who has the earliest marked grave in the cemetery. Owen was reinterred here from another graveyard. The earliest interment in Davis Cemetery is of an infant, Ezra Davis (d. 1872). Also buried here are community leaders and veterans of conflicts dating to the Civil War. Additional property was added to the burial ground in 1952, 1989 and 1994. Cemetery features include vertical stones, curbing, unmarked graves and Woodmen of the World markers. In 1991, the Davis Cemetery Association incorporated to care for the burial ground and establish a trust fund. Today, Davis Cemetery endures as a record of the pioneering families that settled and lived in this portion of Henderson County. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for the pioneering Davis family, who reached Henderson County before the Civil War, this graveyard has served its rural corner since the mid-1800s on land deeded by J.J. Deupree in 1883. It is closely tied to the Baxter community, which became a station on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad by 1901 and soon had stores, churches, cotton gins, and a school. Among those buried here are a county sheriff, a county chief justice reinterred from an earlier grave, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the founding families and officials of a railroad-born farming community, a small chronicle of how East Texas was settled and governed.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at Davis Cemetery is to look in on rural Henderson County as it was being made — a stretch of East Texas farmland taking shape from the mid-1800s onward. The Davis family reached this part of Texas by 1850 and put down roots before the Civil War, joining the steady stream of families who came looking for land they could clear, plant, and pass on.
The decades after the war were a time of slow, stubborn building here. A burial ground took form in the early 1870s, and the country around it filled in gradually — the kind of place where a community was measured less by its size than by whether it had a church to gather in, a gin to bring the cotton to, and ground set aside for its dead.
By 1901 the nearby Baxter community had become a station on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, and with the rails came the ordinary machinery of a working settlement: a post office, stores, churches, cotton gins, and a school. The cemetery gathered the people of that world, and it holds them still.
People & events
The names on these stones read like a roster of everyone a small community needs to keep itself running. John L. Davis, who died in 1873, had come to Texas with his wife Dorcas and their family and settled here before the war; the burial ground carries the family name. One of their sons, Archibald Mallard Davis, went on to serve as sheriff of Henderson County — the kind of local authority a frontier county depended on.
There is a puzzle of firsts here worth untangling. The earliest marked grave belongs to Samuel Tyne Owen, a Henderson County chief justice who died in 1856 — but Owen was reinterred here from another graveyard, so his stone reaches back further than the cemetery itself. The earliest actual burial is far humbler: an infant, Ezra Davis, laid to rest in 1872. Both facts are true, and together they tell you something about how a country cemetery grows — by loss, and sometimes by careful reburial.
Others rest here too: Willie E. Johnson, a school trustee and community leader who died in 1960, and Morton G. Jepson, a constable who died in 1941. Alongside them lie veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War, and in 1991 the descendants organized a Davis Cemetery Association to care for the grounds and build a trust fund for their keeping.
Its place in the American story
The American story is often told through its great cities and famous battles, but just as much of it was written in places like this — where families cleared land, buried their children, and elected their neighbors to keep the peace. Davis Cemetery is a ledger of that quieter history, the settling and self-governing of the rural South and West after the Civil War.
The railroad is the thread that ties this local ground to the national one. When the Texas and New Orleans line made Baxter a station by 1901, it was one small link in the vast web of track that stitched the American interior together in the railroad age — the force that decided which crossroads became towns and which faded. A cemetery full of the people who farmed cotton and kept the stores beside that line is a record of how the rails remade rural America, one small community at a time.
That a sheriff, a chief justice, and a constable all lie in one country graveyard says something too: the offices that hold a democracy together were filled by local people and honored in local ground. This is where the machinery of American self-government actually touched the earth.
If you visit
Come to Davis Cemetery expecting quiet. This is working farmland country, and the cemetery keeps the plain dignity of a place tended by the families whose names it carries. Give yourself time to walk the rows rather than rushing them.
Look for the Woodmen of the World markers — distinctive monuments, often carved to resemble tree trunks or logs, placed for members of that fraternal insurance order in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They are among the most storied grave markers in Texas, and finding one is like reading a small emblem of how communities once looked after one another. Watch, too, for the older vertical stones and the stone curbing that outlines family plots, and know that many graves here are unmarked — the ground holds more people than the stones name.
If you are stitching together a day of back-roads history, this fits naturally with the slow rhythm of rural Henderson County. Read the dates as you go, from the reinterred 1856 stone to the twentieth-century leaders, and you will have traced a whole community's life in a single visit — no ticket, no hurry, just the record the settlers left in the earth.
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 L. Davis
- · Samuel Tyne Owen
Themes & tags
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