Jobe Cemetery
Hawkins, Wood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
African American families settled the Jobe Community on the Lemuel G. Powers survey. Brothers Phelix and Sampson Jobe bought several tracts of land from 1881 to 1892, setting aside land for the Jobe Cemetery. The local economy included cattle, cotton, crops, timber cutting, and sugar cane for ribbon cane syrup. Jobe Brothers Lumber Co. Provided building materials for area projects such as the clubhouse for Little Sandy Hunting and Fishing Club. Land farmed on Little Sandy Creek was impounded as Lake Hawkins in 1962. The oldest burial in Jobe Cemetery is a child of the Shamburger family, but most graves are Jobe family members and relatives. The cemetery is a testimony to a rural community and a way of life.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
African American families settled the Jobe community on the Lemuel G. Powers survey, where brothers Phelix and Sampson Jobe bought tracts of land from 1881 to 1892 and set aside ground for a cemetery. The local economy turned on cattle, cotton, timber, and sugar cane pressed into ribbon-cane syrup, and the family's own lumber company supplied building materials for area projects. The oldest grave belongs to a Shamburger child, but most who rest here are Jobe kin.
Why it matters
The cemetery testifies to the self-reliant Black landowning communities that took shape in East Texas after emancipation and to a rural way of life now largely vanished.
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Related people
- · Phelix Jobe
- · Sampson Jobe
Themes & tags
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