Greenwood Cemetery
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1877, J. M. Cornes purchased four acres on this site and, with county surveyor A. S. Taylor, established "the Longview Cemetery," dedicating its streets to public use. It lay barely outside the city limits and immediately north of the junction subdivision platted three years earlier by the International & Great Northern Railroad. In 1884, Cornes and Taylor extended their cemetery to Magrill Street by acquiring 155 feet of the subdivision. Plots provided space for an estimated 3,392 graves exclusive of a Potter's Field. Most remains in the Pioneer Boring and Leake Cemetery (on what became the east end of College Street) were reinterred here. The earliest headstone from that graveyard is that of Louisa Stroud (1820-1856). The earliest marked grave original to this site apparently is that of Ida Denny (1874-1878). The cemetery was renamed "Greenwood " in 1905, the same year it was included within the city limits. Burials in Greenwood include a veteran of the war of 1812 and 37 known Confederate veterans. Also located here are the graves of three people killed during the 1894 robbery of the First National Bank of Longview by the infamous Dalton Gang, and those of a family that fell victim to the 1900 Galveston storm. Many pioneers and prominent citizens are interred here, including O. H. Methvin, who deeded 150 acres to the Southern Pacific Railroad for the townsite and is known as the father of Longview; Bluford W. Brown, who as state legislator secured the creation of Gregg County; and Britton Buttrill, the Earpville stagecoach stop operator who became a founding commissioner and first treasurer of Gregg County. Greenwood Cemetery is a chronicle of the history of this area. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Laid out in 1877 just beyond Longview's limits and beside a new railroad subdivision, this burial ground became the resting place for the town's founding generation. Its rows hold a War of 1812 veteran, dozens of Confederate soldiers, victims of the 1894 Dalton Gang bank robbery, and a family lost in the 1900 Galveston hurricane, alongside civic fathers like O.H. Methvin, called the father of Longview. Renamed Greenwood in 1905 when the city grew to enclose it, the cemetery reads almost as a directory of the region's past.
Why it matters
Greenwood gathers into one place the railroad boom, frontier violence, and natural disaster that shaped East Texas, making a single cemetery a chronicle of how a town came to be.
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Related people
- · O.H. Methvin
- · Bluford W. Brown
- · Britton Buttrill
Related events
- · 1894 Dalton Gang bank robbery
- · 1900 Galveston hurricane
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
John Tyson Smith
Longview, TX
Born in 1846, John Tyson Smith moved as a boy from Alabama to Upshur County and, after serving in the Confederate army, settled in Longview around 1872. He built a long career in public life—city tax assessor, justice of the peace, and five terms as Gregg County judge—while developing downtown real estate and running the Smith Upstairs Opera House in the early 1900s.
O. H. Methvin
Longview, TX
Georgia-born O. H. Methvin came to Texas around 1848 with his wife Margaret and his father, settling on land in what was then Upshur County. In 1870 he gave 100 acres to the Southern Pacific Railroad, an act that founded the city of Longview; three years later it became the seat of the newly organized Gregg County. Methvin's land gift turned a railroad stop into a county town.
Campbell "Honeymoon Home"
Longview, TX
Before he became governor of Texas, Thomas Mitchell Campbell was a young Longview clerk who read law, married, and set up housekeeping with his bride in this modest frame cottage. He went on to a career as a railroad executive before winning two terms in the statehouse, and in 1982 the little starter home was moved a short distance to be preserved.
First Christian Church of Longview
Longview, TX
Twelve charter members organized this congregation in 1875, meeting first in a schoolhouse before building a frame sanctuary on land deeded by the Texas & Pacific Railroad — a reminder of how the railroads seeded churches and civic life in East Texas towns. James P. Holloway, a prominent local landowner, served as the first pastor. Successive buildings in 1906 and 1936 mark a congregation that grew steadily alongside Longview itself.