Henry Cemetery
Gallatin, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Woodson Henry and his wife Levissa Hutton Henry were part of a group of thirty-five Muskogee (Creek) indian families who came to Texas between 1832 and 1837 from Chambers County, Alabama. After claiming land in Texas, Henry returned to Alabama in 1840 to recruit additional settlers to join him in Texas. His father, Ezekiel Henry, soon packed up and took his family to the area that would become Cherokee County, Texas. Henry Cemetery was founded in 1852 when Ezekiel Henry chose the site to bury his twenty-four year old daughter, Parolee Henry Clark. The cemetery was expanded in 1853 with the burials of Ezekiel Henry and his son, Joseph Francis Henry. At least sixty-eight known descendants of the Henry family are buried in the cemetery. In 1854, neighbor Greenberry Jinkins brought his wife, Elizabeth Medford Jinkins, to be buried in the cemetery. Elizabeth’s is the oldest marked grave in the cemetery. A section of African American burials is located in the northeast corner of the cemetery. One prominent marker is that of Peter Johnson, a former slave of the Jinkins family. Johnson had been given Jinkins family property upon his emancipation. The grave of Aaron Quarll indicates that he was a veteran of World War I. The area around the cemetery was rural until 1902, when the Texas and New Orleans railroad came through, and the town of Gallatin was established. The cemetery has changed hands several times since its founding by Ezekiel Henry, but a mention of the two-acre cemetery was not made in deed records until 1943. The Henry Cemetery Association was founded in 1986, and purchased two additional acres for the cemetery in 1987. Historic texas cemetery – 2008
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Henry Cemetery grew from the graves of a remarkable migration: Woodson Henry and roughly thirty-five Muskogee (Creek) families who left Chambers County, Alabama, for Texas in the 1830s. The burial ground was founded in 1852 when Ezekiel Henry laid his daughter to rest, and it soon held the whole extended family. A section in the northeast corner holds African American burials, including Peter Johnson, a formerly enslaved man given Jinkins family property upon his emancipation, and a World War I veteran, Aaron Quarll.
Why it matters
This single ground braids together Native removal-era migration, slavery and emancipation, and generations of a Texas farming community, showing how tangled and shared American local history really is.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Woodson Henry
- · Ezekiel Henry
- · Peter Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Baysinger Cemetery
Cushing, TX
In 1839, soon after moving his family from Tennessee, Martin Baysinger received a 640-acre land grant in what became Rusk County and built up a plantation with a grist mill, cotton gin, brick pit, syrup mill, store, and post office. His holdings eventually approached 7,000 acres, and he set aside this small burial ground at the death of his first wife in 1870. A wooden grave house and the markers of enslaved people said to be buried nearby are now gone, leaving graves that record the county's pioneer era.
Ellis P. Bean
Alto, TX
Peter Ellis Bean led one of the most improbable lives on the early Southwestern frontier. Arriving with Philip Nolan's mustang hunters in 1800, he was captured by Spanish troops, imprisoned in Mexico, then freed to fight—first for royalists, then for the Mexican rebels under Morelos. He even joined Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans before returning to Mexico, later serving as an Indian agent in Texas and settling near this site.
McCune Cemetery
Laneville, TX
McCune Cemetery grew out of the Chinquapin community in the pine country of Rusk County, its roots reaching back to pioneer James L. McCune, who came to Texas in David G. Burnet's colony and took a land grant in 1835. His son married a local Cherokee woman, Delila Storm, in 1836, and their third child's 1852 burial opened the family graveyard. More than 200 graves now rest beneath hickories, oaks, and chinquapins on land still held by McCune heirs.
1796 Spanish Colonial Rancho of Bernardo D'Ortolan
Nacogdoches, TX
In 1796 the French-born Spanish militia captain Bernardo D'Ortolan settled a rancho along the storied El Camino Real near Nacogdoches, in the turbulent borderland where Spanish, French, Anglo, and Native worlds met. An Indian interpreter and veteran of frontier expeditions, D'Ortolan lived here with his sons and enslaved people, among them Marie Juana, who in 1808 won the governor's permission to buy her eldest son's freedom over D'Ortolan's objection. Swept up in the revolts that shook Spanish Texas, he left his emancipated slave Raphael in charge before being forced out in 1813.