Haley Bush Cemetery
San Augustine, Shelby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
HALEY BUSH CEMETERY THIS HISTORIC CEMETERY IS LOCATED ON THE SAN AUGUSTINE AND SHELBY COUNTY LINE. THE REGION IN THE VICINITY OF THE HALEY BUSH CEMETERY WAS FIRST SETTLED BY PIONEERS AS EARLY AS 1812, ALTHOUGH MOST ARRIVED IN THE 1830s. THE LAND FOR THE CEMETERY WAS DONATED IN 1889 BY HALEY BLOUNT BUSH FROM A 160-ACRE TRACT GRANTED TO HER HUSBAND, JOHN BUSH. HALEY BLOUNT WAS BORN INTO SLAVERY IN PRECINCT 2 OF SHELBY COUNTY SOMETIME FROM 1861 TO 1866 TO GEORGE AND MANDA BLOUNT. HALEY’S FATHER, GEORGE BLOUNT, WAS BORN IN KENTUCKY IN 1833 AND HER MOTHER, MANDA, WAS BORN IN TEXAS AROUND 1837. GEORGE REMARRIED PAULINE (POLLY) JONES IN 1874 AFTER MANDA DIED. ANOTHER PROMINENT BURIAL IS THAT OF ISOM BIGGERS, A WELL-KNOWN AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR VETERAN FROM THIS AREA. THE TWO MEN WHO VERIFIED BIGGERS’ SERVICE, FAYETE McWILLIAMS AND LEWIS GRACE, ARE THOUGHT TO BE BURIED IN HALEY BUSH CEMETERY. FAMILY NAMES OF INDIVIDUALS BURIED HERE ARE DAVIS, FIELDS, JACKSON, JONES, KELLY, LANE, LIGON, MATLOCK, NETHERLY, REDMON AND WADE. SEVERAL OF THE KNOWN BURIALS ARE PERSONS BORN INTO SLAVERY IN TEXAS OR BROUGHT BY EARLY PIONEERS THAT SETTLED IN THIS REGION. THE CEMETERY HAS OVER 300 MARKED BURIALS AND POSSIBLY 70 TO 90 UNMARKED GRAVES. THE EARLIEST MARKED BURIAL IS THAT OF ELLEN JONES BIGGERS (1855-1881), THE FIRST WIFE OF ISOM BIGGERS. THE CEMETERY IS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR VETERANS FROM THE CIVIL WAR, WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, THE KOREAN WAR, AND THE VIETNAM WAR. GRAVE MARKERS VARY FROM CONCRETE, FIELDSTONE, GRANITE, LIMESTONE, MARBLE AND SANDSTONE. THIS HISTORIC BURIAL GROUND IS CARED FOR BY THE HALEY BUSH CEMETERY ASSOCIATION. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Haley Blount Bush, born into slavery in Shelby County in the 1860s, donated land in 1889 from her husband's grant to create this cemetery on the San Augustine county line. Among its 300-plus marked graves is Isom Biggers, a well-known African American Civil War veteran whose service was vouched for by neighbors also thought to rest here. The burial ground holds many people born into slavery and veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam, cared for today by a cemetery association.
Why it matters
Haley Bush Cemetery is a rare and powerful record of an African American community's founders—people who moved from bondage to landownership and military service across the generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Deep East Texas, where San Augustine and Shelby counties meet, was pine-woods frontier when the first pioneers arrived—some as early as 1812, though most came in the 1830s. This was cotton country carved out of forest, worked in large part by enslaved people brought into Texas by those settlers. When Haley Blount was born in Precinct 2 of Shelby County sometime between 1861 and 1866, she was born into that system of slavery, in the very last years it would exist.
Her generation stood on a hinge of history. Slavery in Texas did not end until June 1865, when word of emancipation finally reached the state, and the years that followed—Reconstruction and the decades after—were a time when formerly enslaved families struggled to build free lives on land they could call their own. Haley's own family reflects the movement of people that filled early Texas: her father, George Blount, had been born in Kentucky in 1833, and her mother, Manda, in Texas around 1837.
The cemetery Haley would one day establish sits right on the county line, in a rural community where African American families put down roots in the generation after freedom. To understand this ground, picture a landscape where the memory of bondage was still living, and where owning even a modest tract of land was itself a hard-won triumph.
People & events
The heart of this story is Haley Blount Bush, a woman who began life enslaved and ended it as a landowner and community benefactor. In 1889 she donated the land for this cemetery out of a 160-acre tract that had been granted to her husband, John Bush. That single act—setting aside ground so that her neighbors would have a dignified, permanent resting place—is why the cemetery carries her name.
Her family threads through the record in small, human details. Her father George had lost his first wife, Manda, and remarried a woman named Pauline—known as Polly—Jones in 1874. These are the ordinary rhythms of family life, marriage and loss and remarriage, unfolding in a community that was building itself from the ground up.
Another towering presence here is Isom Biggers, remembered as a well-known African American Civil War veteran from this area. The earliest marked grave in the cemetery belongs to Ellen Jones Biggers, who lived from 1855 to 1881 and was his first wife. There is even a quiet drama of memory attached to Isom: the two men who verified his military service, Fayete McWilliams and Lewis Grace, are themselves thought to lie in this cemetery. Around them rest whole families—Davis, Fields, Jackson, Jones, Kelly, Lane, Ligon, Matlock, Netherly, Redmon, and Wade—many of them people born into slavery in Texas or brought here by the earliest settlers.
Its place in the American story
African American cemeteries like this one are among the most important, and most fragile, records of the American story after slavery. For families who were denied so much of the ordinary paper trail of history—whose births, marriages, and deaths often went unrecorded in official ledgers—the cemetery itself becomes the archive. Every stone is a document.
What makes Haley Bush Cemetery so powerful is the arc it preserves: people who moved, within a single lifetime and across generations, from bondage to landownership. Haley Blount Bush was born enslaved and died having given land to her community. That is the promise of emancipation made concrete in a place you can stand and see.
The cemetery also holds veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam—an unbroken line of military service. That continuity tells a distinctly American truth: that Black families served their country in every generation, often while that country was still denying them full citizenship. With over 300 marked burials and perhaps 70 to 90 unmarked graves, this is a founders' record for an entire community.
If you visit
Come to this quiet county-line burial ground ready to read slowly. The grave markers here were made from whatever families could afford or fashion—concrete, fieldstone, granite, limestone, marble, and sandstone—and that variety is itself part of the story. A hand-poured concrete slab and a polished granite headstone standing side by side tell you a great deal about the means and the love of the people who placed them.
Look for the older markers, and remember that the earliest belongs to Ellen Jones Biggers, who died in 1881. Nearby lie people who were born into slavery, alongside veterans of five different wars. Reading the family names—Davis, Fields, Jackson, Jones, and the rest—you are reading the roster of a community that built itself from freedom forward.
The grounds are looked after by the Haley Bush Cemetery Association, and the site was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010. Treat it as the sacred, working cemetery it still is: walk gently, leave the stones as you find them, and give yourself time to feel the weight of what this small patch of East Texas ground represents. It fits beautifully into a slow back-roads drive through Shelby and San Augustine counties, where history is written on the land itself.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Haley Blount Bush
- · Isom Biggers
- · John Bush
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Antioch Cemetery
San Augustine, TX
In use since at least the 1860s, this East Texas burial ground served the Antioch Church of Christ, a congregation dating to 1836. Stephen Passmore deeded the property to church elders in 1880, though graves marking pioneers and Confederate veterans predate the transfer. Names like Dwire, Baggett, Ware, and Bland record the ordinary settlers who built San Augustine County.
William Garrett House
San Augustine, TX
William Garrett (1808–84) bought this San Augustine County land soon after coming to Texas in 1830 and in 1861 raised a two-story house from pine milled at his own nearby sawmill. Built by enslaved laborers, the home featured unusual free-standing columns and carved mantels over its six fireplaces, and it often sheltered travelers on the Old San Antonio Road. The property passed to the Parker family in 1904.
San Augustine City Cemetery
San Augustine, TX
This East Texas burial ground began as the private cemetery of the J. C. Anderson family, its oldest graves dating to the 1830s, when Texas was still winning its independence. Among those interred here is Col. Stephen William Blount, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, alongside a Confederate captain killed in the Civil War and a noted Episcopal clergyman-historian. The city bought the cemetery in 1911, and an association has cared for it since 1921.
Jerusalem Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
San Augustine, TX
Black worshipers in San Augustine gathered as early as 1845, when two enslaved men, Sutton and Bartlett, were licensed to preach and built a "Church on the Branch." After the Civil War the fellowship stayed within the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, whose Black members were organized in 1866 into the Colored (later Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church; the San Augustine congregation joined in 1870. With roots reaching into slavery, it is considered one of the oldest Black congregations in Texas.