Goodall Cemetery

🏛️The era

In 1846, Texas had just joined the United States, and families from older Southern states were moving west in search of cheap, fertile land. Central Texas, with its prairies, river bottoms, and limestone hills, drew settlers from Arkansas, Tennessee, and beyond. Many came in family groups, with one relative going first and others following once a foothold was made.

It was still a raw frontier. McLennan County was not organized until 1850, and the farms that dotted the region were far apart. Families depended on one another for labor, safety, and comfort.

In that world, death came often and early. Childhood illness and hard living took many young lives, and one of a new settlement's first tasks was setting aside ground to bury its own.

👥People & events

W.H. Everett came from Yellville, in Marion County, Arkansas, and settled on 320 acres here in 1846. Within a few years his homestead faced a sorrow that marked the land forever. When little Sarah Hornbeak, daughter of Samuel and Harriet Hornbeak, died in 1851, only about four years old, Everett set aside this plot for her grave. Her burial began the cemetery.

In 1853 Everett went back for family. He brought his sister Nancy Everett Goodall, widow of William Goodall, and her eight children from Yellville to Texas. Picture a widow moving a large household hundreds of miles to a new frontier, trusting her brother's word that a better life waited.

One of those children, W.B. Goodall, was only a small boy when he arrived. He grew up on this land, later bought the property from his uncle, and lived until 1922. His name, and his family's, became the name of the burial ground.

Today the cemetery holds about 30 marked graves and about nine unmarked ones. The Goodall Cemetery Association set up a perpetual care fund so it will be looked after for generations to come.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The great American westward movement is often told through wagon trains and gold rushes. But much of it happened just like this: one family settling, writing home, and bringing relatives after them. Chain migration from the upper South filled antebellum Texas, farm by farm.

Small family cemeteries are some of the most honest records of that movement. They show who came, how young some of them died, and how families stayed rooted on the same land across generations. A child's grave starting a cemetery is a story repeated across the frontier.

The effort to care for this ground also reflects something national. Across the country, descendants and local associations have kept pioneer cemeteries from vanishing, preserving history that no textbook ever recorded.

🧭If you visit

Expect a small, peaceful country cemetery with about forty graves. Walk slowly and read the dates. You will see the lives of one extended family and its neighbors unfold across the decades, starting with a little girl's grave from 1851.

Look for the gaps too. Unmarked graves are a reminder that many early settlers were buried without lasting stones, and their names are now known only through family memory or records.

This stop pairs well with a drive through the countryside west of Waco and the Bosque River country around Valley Mills. Be respectful: this is a cared-for family burial ground, and it may sit on or near private land.