Evergreen Cemetery
Gustine, Comanche County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of Evergreen began to take shape in the late 1860s. A small strip of land was donated for a community cemetery in 1885 when Mrs. W. F. Hampton was the first recorded person to be interred on this site. A post office was established in 1888 with Samuel Gustine as postmaster, and the town name was officially changed to Gustine. The community grew steadily. Those interred here include prominent members of early Evergreen and surrounding communities such as the Boyd family, landowners, farmers and schoolteachers who operated a cotton gin and blacksmith shop. The Bolton family farmed, hauled freight and mail and operated a barber shop for generations. The Couch and Johnston families hailed from Georgia and Mississippi and were farmers and landowners. The Pettit family of Alabama were bankers, farmers and cattlemen. A road between the Comanche and Gentry Mill communities opened in 1895; Gustine businesses moved to be closer to the main path, but the cemetery remained 3/4 mile to the north. A land donation in 1897 and a purchase of additional acreage in 1918 allowed the cemetery to expand to meet the road. In 1999 there were about 630 burials on 3.284 acres in Evergreen Cemetery. These burials included two Confederate army veterans as well as veterans of World War I and World War II. Though all that remained of the old Evergreen community was a hand-dug well on private property south of the cemetery, the burial ground continued to serve the nearby communities of Pettit, Gustine and Energy. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The community of Evergreen took shape in the late 1860s, and this burial ground was set aside in 1885 when Mrs. W.F. Hampton became the first person interred here. When a post office opened in 1888 under Samuel Gustine, the town took his name. The cemetery holds generations of farming, freighting, and merchant families—the Boyds, Boltons, Couches, and others—along with Confederate and World War veterans, enduring even after the old Evergreen settlement itself faded away.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of a Central Texas farming community that has all but vanished, a quiet record of the pioneer families who built rural America.
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Themes & tags
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