HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Fisher Cemetery

Longview, Gregg County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Several families from Alabama moved to Texas in the early 1830s, building homes in this area and creating the community known as Pine Tree. Sometime before 1860, A.T. Castleberry II designated 1.5 acres of his land for a cemetery. Family as well as early members of the Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which the family was instrumental in establishing, are buried here. The name Fisher Cemetery comes from A.T.’s granddaughter marrying a Fisher and that family’s continuing management. The cemetery now covers approximately 2.7 acres and contains 250 graves with the oldest dated 1860. Fisher cemetery serves as a remembrance of the pine tree community and holds historical and spiritual significance for many residents of Gregg County. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2016

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

In the early 1830s, families from Alabama settled this corner of East Texas and built the community they called Pine Tree, anchoring it with a Cumberland Presbyterian congregation. Before 1860, A.T. Castleberry II set aside an acre and a half of his land for a burial ground, and the graves of church founders and neighbors soon gathered there. Passed into the keeping of the Fisher family through marriage, the cemetery grew to some 2.7 acres and roughly 250 graves, the oldest dating to 1860.

Why it matters

Small settlement cemeteries like this one preserve the names and faith of the ordinary migrant families who filled in the antebellum Texas frontier, long after the community that made them has faded.

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Related people

  • · A.T. Castleberry II

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Cherokee Trace

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This East Texas congregation grew out of Sunday School classes that Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church began holding in the Spring Hill Schoolhouse in the late 1880s. Organized in the 1890s under its first resident pastor, the church took its name from Elmira Castleberry, matriarch of a prominent pioneer family whose sons served as founding elders and donated land and materials for a combined school and church building in 1897-98. The congregation remained active in community and missionary work for generations.

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