Forest Hill Cemetery
Livingston, Polk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
By 1905, all the lots in Livingston's Old City Cemetery had been filled, and community leaders began looking for a new cemetery site. Residents established Forest Hill Cemetery Association in 1906 and bought land from James and Arabella Henington on a hill south of the downtown area. In November 1906, Arthur B. Garner was the first to be buried in the new cemetery. Community women formed the Ladies Cemetery Association of Livingston in May 1908; their purpose was to improve, beautify and preserve the city's two cemeteries. In the 1930s, Marion Tew took charge of maintaining Forest Hill Cemetery, and under her leadership the grounds were beautified and Washington Avenue, which leads to the graveyard, was the first street in Livingston to be paved. Forest Hill Cemetery is a link to Livingston's history. Gravestones indicate the burials of thirty Confederate soldiers and one Union soldier, as well as veterans of subsequent American military actions. Noted individuals buried here include A.H. Bailey, of Mollie Bailey's Circus, George Ely, a traveling circus entertainer, and acclaimed theatre director Margaret "Margo" Jones.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1905 Livingston's old city cemetery was full, so residents formed the Forest Hill Cemetery Association in 1906 and bought a hilltop south of downtown, where Arthur B. Garner became the first burial that November. Women organized the Ladies Cemetery Association in 1908 to beautify the grounds, and in the 1930s Marion Tew's stewardship even prompted the paving of Washington Avenue — Livingston's first paved street. Its stones mark thirty Confederate and one Union soldier alongside circus figures and acclaimed theatre director Margaret 'Margo' Jones.
Why it matters
Forest Hill shows how community women's associations quietly shaped Southern towns, and how a single graveyard can hold soldiers, showmen, and a pioneering woman of the American theater side by side.
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Related people
- · Margaret 'Margo' Jones
- · Marion Tew
- · A.H. Bailey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Margaret V. "Margo" Jones
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Livingston native Margo Jones became one of the most influential figures in mid-twentieth-century American theatre, championing nonprofit regional theatre and the theatre-in-the-round staging she pioneered in Dallas. She guided the careers of Tennessee Williams and William Inge, directing Broadway productions including The Glass Menagerie and Inherit the Wind, and organized the Houston Community Players. Named one of the nation's outstanding little-theater directors, she died in Dallas in 1955, but her model of resident professional theatre endures.
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Born in Georgia in 1839 and raised on a family with Texas plantation holdings, Isaac Newton "Ike" Turner mustered eighty Polk County volunteers at the Livingston courthouse in September 1861 and was elected their captain. He led them east as Company K of the 5th Texas Infantry in Hood's famed Texas Brigade, fighting through some sixteen battles—the youngest company commander in the brigade—before a mortal wound near Suffolk, Virginia, ended his life at twenty-four. First buried in Georgia, his remains were brought home to Texas in 1994 to rest among his family.
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