Kaufman Pioneer Cemetery (Love Family Cemetery)
Kaufman, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William and Nancy Kirk Love and their children were the earliest settlers near King's Fort, establishing themselves there in January 1845. Their son, Robert H. Love, is believed to have been the first person interred on this site upon his death in March 1849. When the Loves sold the land around this site in 1849 they set aside a quarter acre as a graveyard. Nancy Loved died in 1850, William Love in 1851; both are thought to be interred here in unmarked graves. Also buried here are other early Kaufman County settlers and T. J. Johnson, who is believed to have been the son of an African American couple for the Love family. Other burials include those of J. D. Ballew, a farmer and onetime county treasurer; Ann Burge, who may have died from complications in childbirth; and Amanada Murphy Hendley, member of a prominent pioneer family. Also interred here is James S. Loroe, who first came to Texas from New Jersey in 1846 and brought his family here in 1851. Laroe's diary describing the land, wildlife and people of the area provides a valuable firsthand account of the period. His grandson Alfred Laroe was buried here, as well. Martha Jane Rayel was the daughter of an early Kaufman County sheriff. Anna Love Campbell married James M. Carter after the death of her first husband, and research has indicated that several members of the Carter family are interred on this site. The Kaufman Pioneer Cemetery is a chronicle of Texas history. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Love family settled near King's Fort in January 1845, and when they sold the surrounding land in 1849 they set aside a quarter acre as a graveyard—its first burial believed to be their son Robert. Among those interred are early county officials, a diarist whose firsthand account preserved the region's early landscape and people, and T. J. Johnson, thought to be the son of an African American couple tied to the Love family. Each headstone opens a window onto the founding generation of Kaufman County.
Why it matters
This pioneer graveyard is a chronicle in stone of a Texas county's first families—including the Black and white lives bound together in its founding.
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Related people
- · William Love
- · Nancy Kirk Love
- · James S. Laroe
- · T. J. Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church
Kaufman, TX
Organized in 1845 as a Methodist Episcopal congregation in the town then called Kingsborough—soon renamed Kaufman—this church took root just as Texas joined the Union. From a first building in 1857 to a white-frame steepled sanctuary in 1876 and a substantial brick church in 1909, its successive buildings chart the growth of a North Texas county seat. Each stage was led by a named circuit-era pastor.
Church of Our Merciful Saviour
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This Rural Gothic sanctuary grew from an Episcopal parish formed in Kaufman in 1883. With a site given in 1898 and construction led in 1909 by Mr. and Mrs. Woodson Nash, the church was consecrated that May by the Rt. Rev. A. C. Garrett, first bishop of the Missionary District of Northern Texas. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967.
Kaufman County Indigent Cemetery
Kaufman, TX
This burial ground is part of a 600-acre poor farm that Kaufman County opened in 1883 to care for its indigent residents. It became the final resting place for poor-farm residents, jail inmates, transients, and paupers, and may first have received anonymous victims of an 1871 typhoid epidemic. Though most graves are unmarked, the earliest identified belongs to a poor-farm inmate who died the year the farm opened.
Mrs. William P. King
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Frances A. King came to the Republic of Texas alongside her husband, founder of King's Fort in 1840, and pioneered on the frontier with notable courage. After his death in 1846 she—by then Mrs. Tabor—campaigned to make Kingsborough the seat of the newly organized Kaufman County and won. In April 1851 she deeded 75 acres for the townsite and a matching timber tract to the county commissioners, and the fort's settlement grew into the town that shares the county's name.