Lawhon Springs Cemetery
Lexington, Lee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Prior to 1848, the land around the Yegua Spring, later known as Sam Smith Springs and now Lawhon Springs, was inhabited by Native American tribes. In 1848, the families of John Lewis Smith (1796-1851), and son, Samuel Alexander “Sam” Smith (1826-1860), settled here building log cabins for their families. John Lewis Smith was born in England and came to America with his family in 1806, and grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in Wythe County, Virginia. There he married Hester Ann Warren (1796-1886) in 1820. After their first child was born, they moved to Kentucky, Alabama and then Bastrop County, Texas, in 1838. Once the families settled this area in 1848, they dug out the spring and renamed it Sam Smith Springs. David Burl Lawhon later purchased the Smith land, added two more acres to the original one-acre cemetery and changed the name to Lawhon Springs Cemetery. In 1884, Lawhon sold the cemetery land to trustees to manage the property for the community. The first person interred here was the slave of John Lewis Smith, who requested he be buried next to Smith. He was buried in an unmarked grave above the spring on the sandy hillside and then moved to the northwest corner of the cemetery after John’s death in 1851. The grave is now marked with a carved rock. Other burials include John Lewis Smith and Hester Ann Smith, both with markers adorned with a bronze medallion with the words “Citizen of the Republic of Texas.” Three of their six children are also buried here, along with numerous veterans and prominent citizens. From the early pioneer days in Texas, this cemetery has served the communities of Beaukiss, Siloam and Lawhon Springs. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Native peoples long used the reliable water at the Yegua Spring before English-born pioneer John Lewis Smith and his son Samuel settled here in 1848, dug out the spring, and gave it the family name. The Smiths had followed the American frontier from Virginia through Kentucky and Alabama into Republic-era Texas. The first person buried on the hillside was an enslaved man of John Lewis Smith who asked to rest beside him; graves of the Smith family, marked as Citizens of the Republic of Texas, and generations of area pioneers followed.
Why it matters
This pioneer cemetery captures the layered story of Texas settlement—Indigenous land use, immigrant frontier families, and the enslaved people whose lives and labor were bound to theirs.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s, the young Republic of Texas was pulling settlers westward faster than it could organize the land beneath them. The country between the Colorado and Brazos rivers was a patchwork of prairie and post-oak, and the single most important thing a settling family could find was reliable water. A dependable spring was worth more than gold — it decided where cabins rose, where roads ran, and where communities took hold.
The spring at the heart of this place had long been known and used by Native peoples before any settler arrived, a fact the marker states plainly. Water like this was a gathering point across generations and cultures; the families who arrived in 1848 were not discovering empty land but settling ground that had sustained others long before them.
Texas joined the United States in 1845, so families putting down roots in 1848 were living through a hinge moment — the transition from independent republic to American state. The people who dug out this spring and gave it their name were frontier pioneers in the fullest sense, arriving at the very edge of organized settlement.
People & events
The land around the Yegua Spring was home to Native American tribes before 1848, when the families of John Lewis Smith and his son Samuel Alexander "Sam" Smith settled here and raised log cabins. John Lewis Smith's own life was a map of American migration: born in England in 1796, he came to America as a child in 1806 and grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, married Hester Ann Warren there in 1820, and then moved his family across Kentucky and Alabama before reaching Bastrop County, Texas, in 1838. Ten years later they pushed on to this spring, dug it out, and renamed it Sam Smith Springs.
The cemetery's story begins with an act that says a great deal about the tangled human bonds of that era. The first person interred here was an enslaved man of John Lewis Smith, who asked to be buried beside him. He was laid in an unmarked grave above the spring, and after Smith's death in 1851 was moved to the northwest corner of the cemetery; today a carved rock marks the spot. His name is not recorded, but his request — and the fact that it was honored — was remembered.
John Lewis Smith and Hester Ann are buried here too, their graves bearing bronze medallions reading "Citizen of the Republic of Texas," along with three of their six children. Later, David Burl Lawhon purchased the Smith land, added two acres to the original one-acre cemetery, and changed its name to Lawhon Springs. In 1884 he sold the cemetery to trustees to hold for the community, and the ground went on serving the settlements of Beaukiss, Siloam, and Lawhon Springs, gathering veterans and prominent citizens into its rows.
Its place in the American story
This one hillside holds the whole layered story of American westward settlement in miniature. It begins with Indigenous land use — the reminder that the reliable spring was valued and inhabited long before any cabin was built — and moves through the arrival of an immigrant frontier family whose path traced the standard American migration route down the valleys and across the Deep South and into Texas.
And it does not look away from slavery. The first grave belongs to an enslaved man, buried at his own request beside the man who held him — a detail that captures the intimacy and the injustice of bondage in the same breath. That an unnamed enslaved person and Citizens of the Republic of Texas share the same ground is exactly the kind of complicated truth that honest history has to hold.
The cemetery's evolution — from a family plot to community trust land in 1884 — mirrors how countless American communities formalized themselves, turning private frontier holdings into shared civic institutions. Those "Citizen of the Republic of Texas" medallions tie this quiet place to the brief, improbable existence of an independent nation that became a state, and the pioneers buried here were among the people who lived that transition.
If you visit
Lawhon Springs Cemetery sits in the countryside near Lexington in Lee County, and its greatest asset is the very thing that drew people here in the first place: the setting. Notice the land itself — the sandy hillside above the spring that gave the place its purpose. Understanding why the water mattered is the key to understanding why anyone is buried here at all.
Seek out the details the inscription points you toward. Look for the carved rock in the northwest corner that marks the grave of the enslaved man moved there after 1851, and for the bronze "Citizen of the Republic of Texas" medallions on the older Smith graves. Reading those two kinds of markers side by side tells you more about frontier Texas than any textbook could.
As a road-trip stop, this is a place for reflection rather than a quick photo. It rewards visitors who slow down enough to read the stones and imagine the vanished communities of Beaukiss and Siloam that once sent their dead here. Walk it quietly, remember that names both recorded and unrecorded rest on this ground, and let the old spring anchor the whole scene in your mind.
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
- · John Lewis Smith
- · Samuel Alexander Smith
- · David Burl Lawhon
Themes & tags
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