Hayes Cemetery
Midway, Madison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
HAYES CEMETERY IRISH NATIVE PATRICK HAYES ARRIVED IN TEXAS CA. 1836 BY WAY OF NEW YORK AND MARYLAND. SHORTLY AFTER HIS ARRIVAL HE ENLISTED IN THE TEXAS ARMY AND FOUGHT IN THE WAR FOR TEXAS INDEPENDENCE. AFTER BEING HONORABLY DISCHARGED FOR HIS SERVICE, HE MOVED TO THIS AREA. IN THE FOLLOWING YEARS HAYES AMASSED LARGE TRACTS OF LAND THAT HE USED FOR COTTON FARMING AND HORSE BREEDING. HE ESTABLISHED THREE PLANTATIONS—SEVEN OAKS, CAIRO AND BOGGY CREEK—ALONG THE TRINITY RIVER. HAYES WAS KNOWN AS “DR. HAYES” AND PRACTICED HERBAL MEDICINE AS A RESPECTED RURAL DOCTOR. THE CEMETERY AT THIS SITE BEGAN IN 1857 AS A PRIVATE FAMILY BURIAL GROUND ON THE SEVEN OAKS PLANTATION. THE FIRST BURIAL OCCURRED CA. 1857, WHEN HAYES’ SON, JAMES FRANK, DIED. APPROXIMATELY TWO YEARS LATER, PATRICK HAYES’ WIFE, AMANDA MELISSA JOHNSTON, DIED AT OLD WAVERLY. HAYES LATER REQUESTED IN HIS WILL THAT SHE BE REINTERED AT THIS SITE; HE DIED IN 1863 AND IS ALSO BELIEVED TO BE BURIED HERE. THE CEMETERY’S ONLY MARKED GRAVE IS THAT OF PATRICK AND AMANDA’S DAUGHTER, MELISSA ELIZABETH HAYES GOREE, AND HER INFANT CHILD, WHO DIED DURING CHILDBIRTH IN 1865 AT THE GOREE FAMILY PLANTATION, RAVEN HILL, AND WERE LATER REINTERRED HERE. IT IS ALSO BELIEVED THAT HAYES FAMILY SLAVES AND SERVANTS WERE BURIED AT THE SITE, ALTHOUGH WRITTEN DOCUMENTATION HAS NOT BEEN FOUND. PATRICK HAYES’ REMAINING CHILDREN AND LATER DESCENDANTS CHOSE TO BE BURIED IN THE NEARBY MIDWAY CEMETERY, AND THE HAYES CEMETERY BECAME INACTIVE, BUT REMAINS TODAY AS A SYMBOL OF AN EARLY PIONEERING TEXAS FAMILY. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Patrick Hayes was an Irish immigrant who reached Texas around 1836 and promptly took up arms in the war that won Texas its independence. Rewarded and restless, he built a sprawling world of cotton plantations along the Trinity River, practiced herbal medicine as the locally beloved "Dr. Hayes," and in 1857 opened this family burial ground on his Seven Oaks plantation. Beneath its soil lie Hayes kin, and by long belief the enslaved people and servants whose graves went unrecorded, making the quiet cemetery a witness to a pioneering family's rise and the human cost woven into it.
Why it matters
The site captures the immigrant, frontier, and plantation strands of early Anglo Texas in a single burial ground, including the often-unmarked graves of the enslaved.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at Hayes Cemetery is to stand at the very beginning of Anglo Texas. When Patrick Hayes reached the region around 1836, Texas was not yet a state or even a settled republic — it was a contested frontier where a revolution was being fought and won. The land along the Trinity River was thick timber and tall grass, sparsely settled, and full of the kind of opportunity and danger that drew restless newcomers from across the world.
Madison County in these early Republic years was raw country. Roads were traces, towns were a general store and a church, and a man's fortune was measured in acres cleared and crops brought in. Cotton was becoming king across the American South, and the fertile river-bottom soil of East Texas was ideal for it.
That prosperity, here as across the antebellum South, was built on the forced labor of enslaved people. The plantation economy that made large landholders wealthy depended entirely on human bondage, a reality that shaped every acre of ground like this one — and one that the quiet, largely unmarked graves at this site still testify to.
People & events
Patrick Hayes was an Irish immigrant whose journey traced a familiar arc of the era — from Ireland to New York, on to Maryland, and finally to Texas at the dawn of its fight for independence. Newly arrived, he enlisted in the Texas Army and served through the war, earning an honorable discharge that opened the door to land and standing in the young republic.
What he built afterward was substantial: large tracts along the Trinity River worked as cotton plantations, with horse breeding on the side, and three named places — Seven Oaks, Cairo, and Boggy Creek. Locals knew him as "Dr. Hayes," a practitioner of herbal medicine whose care made him a respected figure in a country where trained physicians were rare.
The cemetery itself opened around 1857 with the burial of Hayes's young son, James Frank. His wife, Amanda Melissa Johnston, who had died at Old Waverly, was later reinterred here at Hayes's own request in his will. He died in 1863 and is believed to lie here as well. The single marked grave belongs to their daughter, Melissa Elizabeth Hayes Goree, and her infant, both lost to childbirth in 1865 and later brought to rest at this family ground.
Its place in the American story
This small burial plot holds, in miniature, several of the largest themes in nineteenth-century American history. Hayes's story is an immigrant's story — one of the countless Irish who crossed the Atlantic and pushed toward the country's expanding edges, becoming Americans by helping to build a new place.
It is also a frontier and plantation story. The pattern of a newcomer acquiring land, planting cotton, and amassing wealth was the engine of southern expansion, and it repeated across Texas and the wider South in the decades before the Civil War.
And it is, unavoidably, a story of slavery. The belief that enslaved people and servants were buried here, their graves unrecorded, mirrors a national truth: the prosperity celebrated on so many pioneer monuments rested on lives that history too often left unnamed. That the documentation was never found does not erase them — it is itself part of what this ground remembers.
If you visit
This is a quiet, out-of-the-way place, and that stillness is the point. Hayes Cemetery is a small, long-inactive family burial ground rather than a manicured attraction, so come expecting a peaceful clearing and the sense of standing where an early Texas family chose to lay its dead.
Look for the single marked grave — Melissa Elizabeth Hayes Goree and her infant — and let it stand for all the others. Most of the people believed to rest here, including Patrick and Amanda Hayes and the enslaved people and servants, lie without stones. The absence of markers is not emptiness; it is its own kind of record.
Set in the rolling country of Madison County near Midway, the site fits naturally into a slow back-roads drive through East Texas history. Give yourself a few minutes of silence here before moving on. It rewards reflection more than it rewards a quick photo, and it leaves you thinking about everyone whose name the ground kept but the paperwork lost.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Patrick Hayes
- · Amanda Melissa Johnston
- · Melissa Elizabeth Hayes Goree
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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