Farr's Chapel Cemetery
Newton, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located in the yard of a Methodist church founded in 1868 by Alfred Farr, this cemetery contains more than 150 tombstones placed since the 1850s and 1860s. The first grave, that of Mollie Westbrook, is marked by a rock that bears no date. Land for the cemetery was given in 1873 by Joshua and Matilda Westbrook and in 1892 by William and Mary Westbrook. War veterans, county officials, and early preachers, including the Rev. R. M. Stewart and B. Z. Powell, are buried here. The graveyard is maintained in the "scraped" style, in which all grass is removed from the graves.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Set in the yard of a Methodist church founded in 1868 by Alfred Farr, this East Texas cemetery holds more than 150 tombstones, the earliest dating to the 1850s and 1860s. Its first grave, that of Mollie Westbrook, is marked only by an undated stone, and the Westbrook family later gave land to enlarge the grounds. War veterans, county officials, and early circuit preachers rest here, and the graveyard is kept in the old "scraped" style, with grass cleared bare from the graves.
Why it matters
The scraped-earth cemetery preserves a Southern folk burial tradition that is fast vanishing, making Farr's Chapel a living record of how rural communities honored their dead.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Newton County sits in the deep piney woods of far East Texas, along the Sabine River that forms the border with Louisiana. In the middle of the nineteenth century, this was a region settled largely by families from the older Southern states, who brought with them the farming practices, religious traditions, and folk customs of the rural South.
Methodism was one of the strongest religious forces on this frontier. Circuit-riding preachers traveled long routes through the backwoods, holding services in homes, brush arbors, and simple chapels. Small congregations formed around these visits, and many grew into lasting rural churches with their own burying grounds.
The church at the center of this marker was founded in 1868, in the hard years just after the Civil War. Across the South, rural communities were rebuilding their lives, and churches often served as the steadiest institutions people had: places of worship, gathering, mutual support, and burial.
The cemetery itself is older than the church, with graves dating to the 1850s and 1860s. That pattern is common: families often buried their dead in a shared spot before a formal congregation built its home beside it.
People & events
The church here was founded in 1868 by Alfred Farr, whose name the chapel and cemetery still carry. Its graveyard holds more than 150 tombstones, and the earliest of them reach back to the 1850s and 1860s, before the church itself was organized.
The first grave belongs to Mollie Westbrook. It is marked only by a rock bearing no date, which is a quiet and powerful detail. In early rural cemeteries, a simple fieldstone was often the only marker a family could provide, and many such graves have lost their names to time. Here, at least, memory has held on to who lies beneath it.
The Westbrook family remained central to the cemetery's story. In 1873 Joshua and Matilda Westbrook gave land for it, and in 1892 William and Mary Westbrook gave more. Those gifts, a generation apart, show how a single family's generosity helped a community care for its dead over many decades.
Among those buried here are war veterans, county officials, and early preachers, including the Rev. R. M. Stewart and B. Z. Powell. Together they represent the people who built and served this corner of East Texas, in its pulpits, its public offices, and its times of war.
Its place in the American story
Farr's Chapel Cemetery preserves one of the most distinctive and fast-disappearing folk traditions in the American South: the scraped graveyard. In this style, all grass is removed from the graves, leaving bare, swept earth. Folklorists and historians have documented the practice across the rural South, and while explanations for it vary and are not fully settled, it is often linked to ideas of care, cleanliness, and respect for the dead.
Maintaining a scraped cemetery is hard, ongoing work. It typically depended on community gatherings, where families came together to clean the graves, a tradition that also reinforced bonds among the living. As rural populations have declined and tastes have shifted toward grassy lawn cemeteries, fewer and fewer scraped graveyards remain.
The cemetery also reflects the central role of Methodism in shaping Southern and frontier life. Small churches like this one, founded by local leaders and served by traveling preachers, were the backbone of community life across much of rural America in the nineteenth century.
And its rough, undated stone for Mollie Westbrook speaks for countless early Americans whose graves were marked simply, if at all. Places like this keep their memory alive in a way written records often cannot.
If you visit
Farr's Chapel Cemetery lies near Newton, in the piney woods of East Texas. The most striking thing you will notice is the ground itself: in keeping with the scraped tradition, the graves are cleared of grass, giving the cemetery a look very different from the manicured lawns most visitors expect.
Take your time and look for the variety of grave markers, from the simple fieldstones of the earliest burials to more formal tombstones of later years. Searching for the oldest stones, and remembering that the first grave is marked only by an undated rock, gives you a sense of how much has changed since the 1850s.
This is an active community site, so please be respectful: stay on paths where possible, avoid disturbing the scraped ground, and leave everything as you found it. The bare earth is the result of deliberate and continuing care.
A visit here fits nicely into a road trip through deep East Texas, a region of tall pines, small towns, and quiet back roads near the Louisiana border. For anyone interested in Southern folk traditions or family history, it is a rare chance to see a custom that has vanished from most of the country.
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
- · Alfred Farr
- · Mollie Westbrook
- · R. M. Stewart
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Farrsville Cemetery
Burkeville, TX
Farrsville Cemetery holds the early graves of a Newton County settlement that grew up around Methodist minister Alfred Farr, who arrived before 1860. First known as Hines Cemetery for a nearby homesteader, the ground took its earliest recorded burial in 1859 and was formally deeded in 1878 as a tract reserved for a church, school, and graveyard. It was renamed Farrsville Cemetery in 1992.
Town of Newton
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When Newton was laid out in 1853 in Texas's easternmost county, it was little more than a stand of oaks and beeches—yet its central location won it the county seat that very year. Major John Moore built its first house and its first frame courthouse, and for decades the town crept along, counting just four buildings in 1859. The railroad's arrival in 1905 finally spurred growth, and sawmills turning the surrounding forests into baskets, tool handles, turpentine, and furniture made timber the backbone of the town's economy.
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