Everheart-Canaan Cemetery
Whitewright, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Emanuel and Rachel Montgomery Everheart arrived here in 1848 with their son, William, and members of her family. By 1850, the Everhearts owned 3,346 acres, including this land. Family history holds that the oldest burials here (in the northwest corner) date prior to 1853 and are those of the Everhearts' slaves. Pilot Grove Cumberland Presbyterian Church, organized at Kentuckytown, moved to Everheart land a mile east of this site and became known as the Canaan Church. Members utilized this cemetery and shared their sanctuary with a Methodist Episcopal congregation that moved from Pitman's Chapel. The oldest marked grave, from June 24, 1875, is that of W.H. Rumsower, one of several Confederate soldiers buried here. Other burials include William C. Everheart, the Grayson County Sheriff from 1876 to 1880 and later a Deputy United States Marshal. Many of the pioneers of the Canaan community are buried in family plots here. Nell Arnoldi Everheart cared for the cemetery until her death in 1973, and the Everheart Cemetery Association later formed. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Emanuel and Rachel Everheart reached this stretch of Grayson County in 1848 and within two years held more than 3,300 acres. The oldest graves in the cemetery's northwest corner are believed to be those of people the family enslaved, buried before 1853, while later markers name Confederate soldiers and a county sheriff turned deputy U.S. marshal. Church congregations came and merged on Everheart land, and pioneer families filled the plots, making this one ground that holds both the enslaved and those who enslaved them.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the intertwined and unequal histories of slaveholding pioneers and the people they held in bondage, a stark record of frontier Texas on the eve of and through the Civil War.
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Related people
- · Emanuel Everheart
- · Rachel Montgomery Everheart
- · William C. Everheart
- · W.H. Rumsower
- · Nell Arnoldi Everheart
Themes & tags
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