Eutaw
Kosse, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settled in 1840s. On Franklin-Springfield, Waco-Marlin stage routes. Post office 1856 with Nathan Gilbert postmaster. Eutaw Lodge No. 233, A.F. & A.M., was chartered 1859. Among early settlers were Henry Fox, Allen McDaniel, Charles C., Frank, and Wesley McKinley, and T. A. Polk. Town had churches, school, stores, blacksmith shop, wagon yard. The "Eutaw Blues" (Co. K., 12th Tex. Cav., C.S.A.) fought in Civil War, 1860s. Officers: Capt. A. F. Moss, 1st Lt.; A. H. McDaniel, 2nd Lt.; J. P. Brown. Bypassed in 1870 by Houston & Texas Central Railroad, town died. Salem Baptist Church marks site. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled in the 1840s along the stage routes between Franklin, Springfield, Waco, and Marlin, Eutaw grew into a proper town with a post office, Masonic lodge, churches, school, and shops. Its young men rode off to the Civil War as the "Eutaw Blues" of the 12th Texas Cavalry. But when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad bypassed the town in 1870, its fortunes collapsed, and today only Salem Baptist Church marks the site.
Why it matters
Eutaw is a classic Texas ghost town, a place whose life and death were dictated entirely by whether the railroad chose to come — a common fate across the 19th-century frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Nathan Gilbert
- · A. F. Moss
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Brown Family Cemetery
Kosse, TX
North Carolina native Ervin Brown brought his family to Texas in 1846 and, by 1857, to a 1,600-acre farm in Limestone County near Eutaw. The family plot that grew here holds Ervin and Matilda and generations of their descendants, several of whom shaped Texas public life. Their sons served as Confederate captains, and Thomas Jefferson Brown rose to become Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
Cobb Cemetery
Thornton, TX
Brinkley Davis brought his family from Indiana in 1833 and received a Mexican land grant of some 4,500 acres in 1835, giving the surrounding 'Davis Prairie' its name. His daughter Mary Ellen married Alabama-born Pinckney Cobb in 1845, and the family cemetery was established on Cobb land in the 1850s, with Davis's 1852 grave the earliest marked. Its stones tell hard pioneer truths — many infants and children — alongside veterans of the Santa Fe Expedition, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War.
Cox Cemetery
Groesbeck, TX
Arkansas native Obediah Cox came home from the Civil War in 1864 and settled with his wife Angeline in the Ferguson Prairie community of Limestone County. When Angeline died in 1870 he buried her here, the cemetery's earliest marked grave, later marrying her sister Eliza and adding to the family lands. The burial ground grew to hold Civil War veterans, Masons, and members of the Order of the Eastern Star among the Cox, Glover, Yarbrough, and other pioneer families, and since the 1880s their descendants have gathered here each year for a memorial reunion.
Sansom/Wedgman Cemetery
Groesbeck, TX
Soon after the Civil War, a group of settlers from Mississippi — among them Dr. J. L. Sansom, P. K. McKenzie, and Allen Goodwin — came to this creekside spot on a tributary of the Navasota River and built a church and school, founding a community they called Mount Joy. Around 1870, Dr. Sansom donated two acres for a cemetery; its oldest marked graves date to 1873. The stones record area pioneers, several Confederate veterans, and a sobering number of infants whose short lives testify to the hardships of frontier settlement.