Hartman Cemetery
Old River-Winfree, Chambers County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Robert Wiseman immigrated to Texas in 1825 and received a land grant in 1831 on the banks of Old River in what is now Chambers County. Wiseman sold his land in 1853 to Dr. Edward G. Hartman. Dr. Hartman's wife, Mary Francis Hartman, died about 1853 after giving birth and was probably the first person buried in the family cemetery. Dr. Hartman later remarried and moved to Galveston, where he lived until his death in 1867, but the Hartman children remained at their home on Old River. The small, largely unmarked graveyard was used by the families who owned the land and is an example of rural Texas burial customs. Shallow depressions, along with two brick-covered crypts and two small modern tombstones, are the only physical evidence of the graveyard. Soft handmade bricks over the graves probably were manufactured at the 1870s Pierre Almeras Brickyard about three-fourths of a mile downstream on Old River. There are ten known burials in the Hartman Cemetery. Although there is no visible evidence, a separate slave cemetery is thought to exist on land adjacent to the family graveyard. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This small graveyard on the banks of Old River began with a tract granted to Texas immigrant Robert Wiseman in 1831 and sold in 1853 to Dr. Edward Hartman, whose first wife was likely its earliest burial. Now marked mostly by shallow depressions, handmade brick crypts, and a few stones, the cemetery preserves rural Texas burial customs—including bricks probably fired at a nearby 1870s brickyard. A separate slave cemetery is believed to lie on adjacent land.
Why it matters
Modest family graveyards like this one document how ordinary settlers lived, died, and were remembered—and the suspected adjoining slave cemetery is a quiet reminder of the enslaved people whose graves went unmarked.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Wiseman
- · Edward G. Hartman
- · Mary Francis Hartman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Linney Cemetery
Dayton, TX
Founded in the 1850s to serve the people of West Liberty—now Dayton—this thirteen-acre burial ground grew informally, its sections known by family names like Smith and Alford, with a separately reserved area for Black residents now called Acie Cemetery. Many graves are unmarked; the earliest documented is that of six-day-old Joseph Monroe Linney in 1880. Those laid to rest here include pioneer settlers, elected officials, and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Enoch Brinson & Pecan Grove Plantation
La Porte, TX
Enoch and Eliza Brinson came to Texas in 1824 among Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, settling a league of land overlooking San Jacinto Bay. Enoch opened a blacksmith shop and, unable to serve as a soldier because of a disability, supplied labor and goods to the Texian cause during the Revolution. His plantation grew to hundreds of cattle and improved acreage worked in part by an enslaved person, and after his death in 1861 his widow Delilah ran the estate before dividing the land among their children.
Old River
Old River-Winfree, TX
Old River, a looping channel of the Trinity, drew some of the earliest pioneers to this corner of southeast Texas in the 1820s and 1830s, among them Robert and Eleanor Wiseman on land grants taken up in 1827. Fertile soil and open grassland made it a farming and ranching center whose hides, timber, and charcoal were shipped down to market in Galveston. That trade fostered shipbuilding firms, brick kilns, and ferry operations, seeding a pattern of settlement whose descendants still live in the area.
Henry and Amelia Griffith
Mont Belvieu, TX
Pennsylvania native Henry Griffith and his Louisiana-born wife Amelia "Milly" Barrow settled this area in 1826, when it was still under Mexican rule, receiving a land grant in the Atascosito District where they farmed and raised cattle. In 1835 Griffith sold land including the "big hill" that his deed dubbed "Mont Bellview"—the origin of the name Mont Belvieu. Living under the flags of Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the United States, Griffith even served as a Reconstruction-era sheriff before his death in 1869.