Gober Cemetery
Bonham, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The earliest recorded grave in this cemetery is that of R. M. C. Self (d. 1865). Attracted by the beauty of the site, area settlers built a tabernacle here ten years later. According to oral history, the community purchased a marble slab for the grave of Aaron Hassenger (1860-1907), as was the custom for those who had no family or funds. The Carpenter family, long-time residences, donated 2.5 acres for the cemetery in 1909. A caretaker was hired in 1942 and community members began to gather yearly for memorial services, forming a cemetery association in 1977. A 1997 count revealed 916 marked and 71 unmarked graves; many are those of veterans of the U. S. military forces. The graveyard continues to serve the community. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The earliest grave in this Fannin County cemetery belongs to R.M.C. Self, who died in 1865, and a decade later settlers drawn by the beauty of the spot raised a brush tabernacle nearby for gatherings. Community custom went so far as to buy a marble slab for a man who died in 1907 with no family or funds. The Carpenter family gave land in 1909, a caretaker came in 1942, and an association formed in 1977 to tend the hundreds of graves, many of them military veterans.
Why it matters
Gober Cemetery shows how a rural community sustained its own dead across generations, turning a burial ground into a lasting institution of mutual care.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Moore's Chapel Cemetery
Bonham, TX
Alexander Moore and his wife Mary Jane brought their family from Missouri to this part of Fannin County in 1857, and in the mid-1870s donated two acres to a growing community for a cemetery, with neighbor Martha Cashion the first recorded burial in 1876. A Baptist sanctuary rose just to the north on land the Moores also gave, and church, school, and graveyard together became the community center known as Moore's Chapel. A grim cluster of infant graves from the 1880s and 1890s records a typhoid outbreak, while veterans from the Civil War through World War II rest among the pioneer families still tended by a cemetery association.
Joseph F. Fenner
Leonard, TX
This Star-and-Wreath grave marker honors Joseph F. Fenner, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence who served in Shackelford's Company under Colonel Fannin's command in 1836. Erected by the State of Texas in 1962, it commemorates one of the citizen-soldiers of the revolution that won Texas its independence. Fannin's command is best remembered for its tragic end at Goliad, making every survivor's story part of that fraught campaign.
Ladonia Cemetery
Ladonia, TX
The chief burial ground of Ladonia grew from two sections—an I.O.O.F. (Odd Fellows) cemetery and a Presbyterian one—before their management merged around 1902. Among its earliest graves are an infant from 1866, the "Stranger's Tomb" of an unknown traveler who died in 1867, and Baptist pastor and Civil War veteran William Lovelace Foster. Over generations it gathered in Fannin County officials, early settlers, and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.
Col. James Tarleton
Bonham, TX
In late 1835 James Tarleton raised a company of 36 riflemen in his native Kentucky and set out for Texas, arriving to find San Antonio already liberated. Though an officer, he fought in the ranks at the victory of San Jacinto in April 1836. Having lost his wife Nancy in Kentucky that same year, he settled afterward in Fannin County with his son Robert.