Kellum Family Cemetery

🏛️The era

Edward Kellum's life covered an extraordinary stretch of American history. He was born in Virginia in 1787, when the Constitution was being written, and died in Texas in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. In between he took part in one of the great movements of his era: the steady westward migration of Southern families in search of new land.

The War of 1812 came early in that life. In the western states, including Tennessee, militia service was a common duty for young men. Tennessee's citizen-soldiers were called out during the war and the conflicts tied to it, and many came home to marry and start farms on the expanding frontier.

Migration in that generation often came in stages, as the Kellums' did: a few years in one place, then a move further west. Alabama and Mississippi drew huge numbers of settlers in the decades after the war. Later, many of the same families, or their children, moved on to Texas.

By the time the Kellums reached McLennan County in 1854, Waco was still a young town on the Brazos. The rich river-bottom land drew farmers, and the region was growing quickly in the years before the Civil War.

👥People & events

The marker traces the life of Edward Kellum, a Virginian who served in the Tennessee Militia during the War of 1812. In November 1812, in the middle of that war, he married Karen H. Tabor. Together they raised ten children through more than four decades and several moves, from Alabama to Mississippi and finally to Texas.

When they settled in McLennan County in 1854, Edward was already in his late sixties, an age when few people start over on new land. The family bought land along the Brazos and built a farm. At some point before 1863, they set aside part of it as a family burial ground.

Edward was the first to be buried here, after his death on February 23, 1863. Karen followed in 1869 and was laid beside him. Their sons William Riley Kellum and Thomas Smith Kellum are also buried here, along with others in the family. In all there are twenty-five known graves, and fourteen are marked only by sandstone stones whose words have worn away.

The last burial was Mary Elizabeth Jurney Kellum, William's widow. When she died in 1895, her will provided for the cemetery's care. It was a final act of remembrance that helped the plot survive while the city grew up around it.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Kellum family's story is an American migration in miniature. A Virginia-born veteran of the War of 1812 moved across the Deep South and ended his days on the Texas frontier. That path, from the old seaboard states through the Gulf South and into Texas, was followed by countless families in the first half of the nineteenth century, and it shaped the culture, economy and politics of the region.

Family cemeteries like this one were once found all over rural America. Before churchyards and town cemeteries were easy to reach, families buried their dead on their own land. Many of these graveyards were later lost to plows, roads and development.

That this cemetery survived inside a growing city is remarkable. Its shrinking from one acre to half an acre tells the story of rural land turning into city land. A War of 1812 veteran's grave, still in place among modern streets, links today's Waco to the generation that fought Britain a second time.

🧭If you visit

This small cemetery now sits inside the city of Waco, so finding it can be a nice surprise: a quiet patch of the nineteenth century among modern streets. Come slowly and respectfully, because this is still a family burial ground.

Look especially at the sandstone markers. Fourteen of the graves have stones that are now illegible, worn smooth by more than a century of Texas weather. Remember that each one marks a member of the Kellum family whose name has faded from the stone, though not entirely from the record. Please do not rub, clean or lean on the old stones, because sandstone is fragile.

Think about how much the land has changed. The marker says this was once a one-acre rural graveyard on a Brazos River farm. Picture fields and river-bottom woods in place of the city around you.

A visit fits easily into a Waco trip that also covers the city's Brazos River history and its nineteenth-century roots. Check local access before you go, and treat this as a place of mourning rather than a tourist attraction.