Hopewell Cemetery
Brushy Creek, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Serving the rural area of north Anderson County and the community of Brushy Creek, this cemetery traces its history to the 1860s. The earliest documented burial in the graveyard is that of Zylpha Wylie, who died in 1862. There are at least 74 unmarked graves. A number of people were buried here in the 1870s, including many infants and children. Several generations of some pioneer Anderson County families are represented by the gravestones found in the Hopewell Cemetery. Also interred here are five Confederate veterans of the Civil War. The land on which the cemetery is located was officially designated as a burial ground in 1881, when John H. and Mary Young deeded the property to trustees of the Church of Christ at Hopewell. Totaling about six acres, the land was purchased for $15.00 by church trustees William Elkins, Chesley Murphey, and John L. Scarborough. Descendants of the area's pioneer settlers formed a cemetery association in 1953 to provide maintenance for the historic graveyard. A memorial service is held once a year. (1990)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Serving north Anderson County and the Brushy Creek community, this graveyard dates to the 1860s, its earliest documented burial being Zylpha Wylie in 1862. Alongside the marked stones lie at least 74 unmarked graves, many of infants and children, and five Confederate veterans of the Civil War. In 1881 John and Mary Young deeded six acres to trustees of the Church of Christ at Hopewell for $15, and descendants formed an association in 1953 to maintain the historic ground.
Why it matters
Pioneer cemeteries like Hopewell preserve the intimate human record of frontier settlement—its families, its high child mortality, and its Civil War generation.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Olive Branch Cemetery
Palestine, TX
Settlers from the Brushy Creek country of South Carolina reached this part of Anderson County in the 1850s, carrying the name with them to the local streams and community. By 1858 a one-room building served as church and school, with an adjoining graveyard whose earliest marked burial dates to 1856. Among those interred are pioneer families and veterans, including James Eastland, who fought in the Mexican and Civil Wars and later sat in the Texas Legislature.
Concord Baptist Church and Cemetery
Palestine, TX
Three Fitzgerald families settled Mound Prairie Creek in the 1840s, giving their name to the community that grew there. Fifteen charter members organized Concord Baptist Church at the local schoolhouse in 1871—naming it for a Louisiana community they had left—and worshipped in successive sanctuaries here despite a 1940 fire, with the adjoining cemetery holding early settlers and three Confederate veterans.
Old Montalba
Montalba, TX
Pioneers began settling this Beaver Valley country around 1853, when P.G. Oldham built his home beside the Palestine–Athens road traveled by early mail hacks. The valley grew a Primitive Baptist church, the Beaver Academy school, and a frontier doctor's practice, and during the Civil War an iron foundry here cast arms and bullets for the Confederacy while the young men were away at war. A post office named Montalba followed in 1880, its name inspired by a snow-capped mountain glimpsed on the horizon.
Mound Prairie Cemetery
Palestine, TX
The earliest marked graves here date to the late 1850s, though the Mound Prairie community—home to a Baptist college known as Mound Prairie Institute—was settled considerably earlier. As the town declined late in the nineteenth century, this cemetery became one of its few surviving reminders. Many pioneer settlers and their descendants lie here alongside several Confederate veterans, some beneath rock cairns or hand-hewn stones.