Hatch Cemetery
Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery served the Hatch family and other members of the former community of Chocolate. Captain Sylvanus Hatch, founder of the settlement, was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts on June 1, 1788. He became a contractor and builder, eventually moving to Louisiana, where in 1821 he married Pamela Louisa Nicholson Brown, a widow who had three children from her previous marriage; Sylvanus and Pamela would have three additional children, much of Captain Hatch's life was devoted to military service. he served in the War of 1812 as an adjutant under General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans. Later, he served in the Texas War for Independence. Sylvanus Hatch and his family came to Texas in the 1820s, moving to the Chocolate Creek area by 1842. The Hatch family became involved in civic, church and educational activities. Captain Hatch established the cemetery in 1850, when his wife, Pamela, died of Cholera. She and her husband had been attending to German immigrants with the disease who had docked at Indianola; victims of the outbreak are interred here. Captain Hatch and two of his sons, John and Davis, who were both Confederate veterans, are buried here as well. Also interred are members of the Brett and Foester families, as well as other community members. Cemetery features include curbing and a 1936 Texas centennial marker for Sylvanus Hatch. In 1959, Hatch Bend Country Club purchased this property. Since that time, the club has maintained the burial ground. Today, Hatch Cemetery continues to serve as a record of a pioneering Texas Family. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground served the family of Captain Sylvanus Hatch, a Cape Cod–born builder who served in the War of 1812 as an adjutant under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans before later joining the Texas War for Independence. The Hatch family reached the Chocolate Creek area by 1842, and the captain established the cemetery in 1850 when his wife Pamela died of cholera—an outbreak that also killed German immigrants who had landed at Indianola and lie buried here. Hatch and two Confederate-veteran sons are interred among other pioneering families.
Why it matters
The cemetery links a veteran of the young republic's wars to the settling of the Texas Gulf Coast and the immigrant waves that suffered the era's deadly coastal epidemics.
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Related people
- · Sylvanus Hatch
- · Pamela Louisa Nicholson Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wiley George
Port Lavaca, TX
Born in North Carolina in 1797, Wiley George enlisted in the Georgia militia at seventeen and fought in the War of 1812. After years in Georgia and Alabama he came to Texas in 1840, settling first in San Antonio and then moving to Port Lavaca in 1848, where he speculated in horses and built a fine home. He died in 1862 and lies in an unmarked grave in the Port Lavaca Cemetery.
Clark Cemetery
Port Lavaca, TX
This burial ground served the Clark family of the vanished Chocolate community, named for nearby Chocolate Creek where Sylvanus Hatch and his brother Joseph settled in 1846. Residents raised cattle and horses, farmed, and worshipped at St. Paul's-on-the-Prairie, whose building also housed the school. In the mid-1850s John Clark arrived and built stock pens known as Clark's Station along the Indianola Railroad, letting area farmers ship crops and cattle to market; he deeded this cemetery in 1899.
Moses Johnson, M.D.
Port Lavaca, TX
Born in Virginia and educated in New Hampshire, Dr. Moses Johnson moved from Illinois to Port Lavaca around 1837 and then to Austin in 1840. A physician and active Mason, he served as mayor of Austin and as treasurer of the Republic of Texas under his friend President Anson Jones. He died of yellow fever and was buried on his ranch alongside his wife Olivia.
Kamey Community
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John William McKamey, born in Arkansas in 1878, graduated from Baylor University in 1899 and returned to Texas to help run his family's cotton farm. With relatives and a partner he acquired more than 8,000 acres that became the Kamey Community, moving there in 1912 to raise cattle, cotton, and grain sorghum with his wife Maude. A rail depot, a one-teacher school, a post office, and a long-lived general store grew up around the family, whose descendants still work the land.