K.M. Jones Family Cemetery
Temple, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
K.M. JONES FAMILY CEMETERY THIS FAMILY BURIAL GROUND WAS ESTABLISHED WHEN KEETON McLEMORE JONES WAS BURIED HERE IN 1890. JONES WAS A FARMER, STAGE STOP OPERATOR, AND VETERAN OF THE TEXAS WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. HE PARTICIPATED IN THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO, GUARDING BAGGAGE AT THE CAMP OPPOSITE HARRISBURG. JONES AND HIS FAMILY MOVED TO BELL COUNTY FROM GRIMES COUNTY IN 1865, SETTLING NEAR THE OLD HOWARD COMMUNITY; HE AND HIS WIFE, LAURA ANN (CARTER), HAD 12 CHILDREN. LAURA CARTER IS INTERRED HERE WITH HER HUSBAND, ALONG WITH E.L. SEGUR, ONE OF THEIR GRANDDAUGHTERS. TODAY, THE K.M. JONES FAMILY CEMETERY IS A TESTIMONY TO A PIONEERING TEXAS FAMILY AND PROVIDES A REMINDER OF THOSE WHO SERVED DURING THE TEXAS WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Bell County family burial ground took its name when Keeton McLemore Jones was laid to rest here in 1890. A farmer and stage stop operator, Jones had fought in the Texas War for Independence, guarding the baggage camp opposite Harrisburg during the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto before moving his large family to the Howard community in 1865. His wife Laura Ann and a granddaughter rest beside him, making the plot a compact monument to one pioneering Texas clan.
Why it matters
The graves link an ordinary settling family directly to the decisive battle that won Texas independence, a reminder that the republic's veterans went on to build its farms and towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This small family burial ground in Bell County reaches back to the very founding of Texas. Its central figure, Keeton McLemore Jones, belonged to the generation that won the region's independence — men who fought as young settlers and then spent long lifetimes building the farms, roads, and communities of the state they had helped create. To visit here is to touch that founding generation directly.
When Jones and his family arrived in Bell County in 1865, moving from Grimes County to settle near the old Howard community, central Texas was still a landscape of new farms and scattered settlements. Families put down roots, worked the land, and depended on the stage roads and rough infrastructure that tied one community to the next. Jones himself wore several of the era's hats at once — farmer and stage stop operator both.
The cemetery took its name and its purpose in 1890, when Jones was buried on this ground. By then the frontier of his youth had matured into a settled agricultural country, and the burial of an aging veteran here closed a circle that had opened decades earlier on a distant battlefield.
People & events
The heart of this place is the long life of Keeton McLemore Jones. As a young man he took part in the Texas War for Independence, and specifically in the Battle of San Jacinto, where he served by guarding the baggage at the camp opposite Harrisburg. It was not the glory of the front line, but it was essential duty — someone had to secure the supplies and the camp while the fighting decided the fate of a would-be republic.
What gives the story its human weight is everything that came after the battle. Jones lived on to become a farmer and a stage stop operator, and with his wife, Laura Ann Carter Jones, he raised twelve children — a full and demanding household by any measure. In 1865 the family relocated to Bell County and settled near the Howard community, joining the steady work of building a rural Texas neighborhood.
When Jones was laid to rest here in 1890, the ground became the family's own. Laura Ann is interred beside her husband, and one of their granddaughters, E.L. Segur, rests here as well. Three generations, then, are gathered in a single plot — a compact record of one pioneering clan's endurance across the whole of the nineteenth century.
Its place in the American story
The great national significance of this modest cemetery is the way it links an ordinary settling family straight to a decisive moment in American history. The Battle of San Jacinto secured Texas independence, and the men who fought there did not vanish into legend — they went home, cleared fields, ran stage stops, and raised large families. Jones is that story in miniature.
It is a useful corrective to how we usually remember founding events. We tend to picture the battle and stop there. This grave insists on the sequel: the veteran who spent the next half-century as a farmer, the wife who bore and raised twelve children, the descendants who filled out a community. Independence was not an endpoint but a beginning, and these were the people who did the building.
Recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010, the site preserves that continuity between a nation-shaping battle and the everyday labor that followed it. It reminds us that the republic's veterans became its farmers and its town-builders — that the same hands that guarded a camp in 1836 later worked the soil of Bell County.
If you visit
Come here for the quiet power of a small family plot rather than for grand monuments. This is an intimate place, and its intimacy is the point: a single family, three generations deep, gathered in one patch of Bell County ground. Take a moment to consider that within this modest space rests a man who was present, as a young settler, at the battle that made Texas.
Let the setting turn your mind toward the working life behind the war record — the farm, the stage stop, the household of twelve children. It's a reminder that the people who shaped early Texas were, for most of their days, ordinary neighbors doing ordinary and demanding work.
For a traveler tracing the story of Texas independence, a stop here offers something the famous battlefield sites cannot: the human afterward. It fits naturally into a drive through central Texas history, and it rewards the kind of visitor who understands that a small, well-kept family cemetery can carry as much meaning as any towering memorial. Walk gently and give the ground its due.
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
- · Keeton McLemore Jones
- · Laura Ann Carter Jones
Themes & tags
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