Garland Cemetery
Annona, Red River County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Joseph and Martha Starks Wagley came to Red River County from Louisiana in 1833, settling in this area south of present-day Annona. The couple had eight children by the time of Martha's death in 1857, and Joseph later married widow Nancy Ann Coffee, with whom he had an additional two children. He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and his son Starks died in the conflict. In 1866, Joseph Wagley sold 2,300 acres of land, including this family burial ground, to John C. and J.D. Garland, and moved to Callahan County. Several Wagley family members are known to be buried here, although only two of the graves are marked. The earliest death date on a tombstone, that of Ella McCallum, is 1874. The cemetery became known by the Garland name over the years, and family members deeded five acres to the Methodist church in 1914 for continued use as a graveyard. Today, Annona Methodist Church and members of the community maintain the historic site, which serves as a tie to generations of area settlers. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Joseph and Martha Wagley came from Louisiana to Red River County in 1833, part of the wave of settlers moving into the young Republic of Texas's borderlands. Their family burial ground took shape here before the Civil War, in which Joseph served the Confederacy and lost a son. After Joseph sold the land to the Garland family in 1866 the cemetery took on their name, and by 1914 it passed to the Methodist church, which with the Annona community still tends it today.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the layered story of Texas settlement — migration, the Civil War's toll, and the church-centered communities that carried memory forward for generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1833, when Joseph and Martha Wagley came up from Louisiana into Red River County, Texas was not yet Texas as we know it — it was still Mexican territory, three years shy of its war for independence. The country along the Red River, in the far northeast, was some of the earliest ground Anglo-American families settled, drawn by rich bottomland and the promise of cheap acreage on a distant frontier.
These were pioneers in the fullest sense. They arrived before there were towns, before there was a Republic, before the county lines we use today were drawn. They cleared land, raised large families, and, when death came, buried their own on their own property, because there was nowhere else to do it.
By the time the Civil War reached this corner of Texas a generation later, families like the Wagleys had become established landowners with deep roots — and deep stakes in the conflict that was about to divide the country and touch nearly every household in the South.
People & events
Joseph and Martha Starks Wagley built a large family in this area south of present-day Annona — eight children by the time Martha died in 1857. Joseph later remarried, to a widow named Nancy Ann Coffee, and had two more children, the kind of blended frontier household that hardship and remarriage often produced.
Then came the war. Joseph served in the Confederate Army, and the conflict took from him what it took from so many Southern families: his son Starks died in it. The family burial ground on their land, which had already received Wagley dead, now carried that loss too — though today only two of the family's graves here are marked, and the earliest legible death date belongs to Ella McCallum in 1874.
In 1866, in the hard years just after the war, Joseph sold 2,300 acres — including this cemetery — to John C. and J.D. Garland, and moved on to Callahan County. The land changed hands, and over time the graveyard took the Garland name. In 1914, family members deeded five acres to the Methodist church, ensuring the site would go on serving the community. Today the Annona Methodist Church and local residents keep it tended.
Its place in the American story
The Garland Cemetery holds, in miniature, the whole layered story of how Texas — and much of the American frontier — was settled and remembered. It begins with migration, a family pulling up from Louisiana into raw new country, and moves through the founding of a community, the trauma of the Civil War, and the slow institutional care that carried memory forward when the founding family itself had moved away.
That arc — private homestead graveyard becoming church cemetery becoming a site tended by the whole community — was repeated across thousands of small places in rural America. It shows how the church, more than any government, became the keeper of a settlement's dead and the anchor of its collective memory.
The war's mark here is quiet but real: a father who served, a son who did not come home, a family that sold its land and scattered in the aftermath. Recognized by the Texas Historical Commission as a Historic Texas Cemetery, this ground preserves the human cost and continuity behind the dry facts of settlement.
If you visit
Garland Cemetery sits in the countryside south of Annona, and part of what makes it moving is how little it announces itself. Many of the earliest graves — including most of the Wagley family's — are unmarked, so what you see is only part of what rests here. Walk gently and read the stones that remain; the oldest legible date reaches back to 1874.
Think, as you go, about how the place changed hands: a family cemetery that became a Garland cemetery, then passed into the care of the Methodist church. That it is still mowed and tended today is the work of the Annona congregation and neighbors who never let it go to ruin — a living answer to the question of who remembers, once the founders are gone.
It belongs on a route through the old Red River country of far Northeast Texas, among the earliest-settled stretches of the state. You won't need long here, but give it the respect of a slow walk and a moment's quiet for the names time has already half erased.
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
- · Joseph Wagley
- · Martha Starks Wagley
- · John C. Garland
Related events
- · Civil War
Themes & tags
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