George Bell Madeley Cemetery
Magnolia, Montgomery County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born at Trittiford in Hall Green, near Birmingham, England, in 1815, George Bell Madeley emigrated to Texas about 1845. In Harrisburg he met and wed Helen Adeline Grant (b. 1821), a native of Yardley, England. The following year they established their home in this area, then known as Egypt community. Madeley became a successful planter and his Egypt farm was a model of self-sufficiency. The enterprise included orchards, a cotton gin, a grist mill, vineyards, a sugar mill, and cattle, in addition to his cultivated lands of cotton and sugar cane. This cemetery, located on the Madeley farm, began in 1848 with the interment of Madeley's brother-in-law, John Hurley. Also an Englishman, Hurley was the husband of Helen Madeley's sister, Teresa. George Bell Madeley died in 1879 and was buried here, as was his wife, who died in 1897. Other burials include those of family members and friends. Three of the Madeleys' sons are among the interments. Maintained by family descendants, the cemetery is an important reminder of a successful early planter family. It also reflects the influences of European immigration on the development of the state.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the mid-1840s a young Englishman, George Bell Madeley, left the outskirts of Birmingham for the raw new Republic-turned-state of Texas, married another English emigrant, and built a nearly self-sufficient plantation in the community then called Egypt. His farm knit together orchards, vineyards, a cotton gin, and both grist and sugar mills, and the family cemetery began in 1848 with the burial of his brother-in-law. Tended today by descendants, the grounds hold the Madeleys and the neighbors who shared their frontier world.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a quiet record of how European immigrants helped build antebellum Texas agriculture, planting Old World families and skills into the soil of a new state.
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Related people
- · George Bell Madeley
- · Helen Adeline Grant Madeley
- · John Hurley
Themes & tags
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