Lee Cemetery
Roxton, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Herbert J. Lee of Virginia moved to this area by 1859. One-year-old Georgiannia W. Derrick died in 1860 and was buried on the Lee property. Herbert Lee designated the land for a cemetery in his 1865 will. At some time after May 1908, two stones were erected bearing the names of George W. and William B. Derrick, who died in 1831. Whether or not the two pioneers are interred on this site remains unknow. Most graves are dated between 1870 and 1890. Money was tight during the Reconstruction era, which may explain the lack of ornate stones. An underground vault in the center of the graveyard filled with dirt and the markers within the vault deteriorated. At least one grave on this site it that of a citizen of The Republic of Texas. Others were veterans of the Civil War. The last burial took place in 1913. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This quiet country burial ground grew up around the 1860 grave of a one-year-old child on Herbert Lee's farm, and he set the land aside for a cemetery in his Civil War-era will. Most of those laid to rest here were buried between 1870 and 1890, in the lean years of Reconstruction when few could afford ornate stones. Among them rest a citizen of the Republic of Texas and veterans of the Civil War.
Why it matters
Pioneer cemeteries like this are ground-level records of frontier settlement, the Civil War generation, and the hard economics of the Reconstruction South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The land around Roxton, in the blackland country of northeast Texas, was drawing settlers in the years just before the Civil War. Herbert J. Lee, a Virginian, had made his way here by 1859 — part of the steady stream of families moving west from the older Southern states in search of farmland. This was raw settlement country, where a family's own property often served as the first and only burial ground for miles.
Then came the war, and after it the long, hard stretch of Reconstruction. For the rural South, the 1860s and 1870s were lean years: cash was scarce, the old economy had been upended, and even grief had to be observed on a budget. A community could bury its dead, but fine carved headstones were a luxury most families simply could not manage.
That economic reality is written right into this cemetery. Most of its graves date from the 1870s and 1880s, the very heart of the Reconstruction era, and the plainness of the stones is itself a historical document — a record, in silence, of how tight money was for ordinary families rebuilding their lives in the postwar South.
People & events
The cemetery's origin is a small, human heartbreak. In 1860, a one-year-old child named Georgiannia W. Derrick died and was buried on Herbert Lee's property. That single grave seems to have consecrated the ground: in his 1865 will, made during the closing convulsions of the Civil War, Lee formally set the land aside as a cemetery.
There is a genuine mystery here, too. Sometime after May 1908, two stones appeared bearing the names of George W. and William B. Derrick, who died back in 1831 — years before anyone was buried on this land, and before Texas statehood. Whether those two pioneers actually lie here, or whether the stones are memorials placed by descendants, remains unknown. It's the kind of unresolved question that gives an old graveyard its quiet pull.
The people resting here span the frontier generation. At least one grave belongs to a citizen of the Republic of Texas — someone who lived under the Lone Star flag when Texas was its own nation. Others were veterans of the Civil War. At the center of the ground, an underground vault filled over time with dirt, and the markers inside it wore away. The last burial took place in 1913, closing the cemetery's active life after roughly half a century.
Its place in the American story
A country cemetery like this one is a primary source you can walk through. Its rows record, without a single written history, the settlement of the frontier South, the generation that fought the Civil War, and the grinding economics of the Reconstruction years that followed. The absence of ornate stones says as much about the era as any elaborate monument could.
The presence of a Republic of Texas citizen ties this modest plot to the extraordinary decade when Texas stood as an independent nation before joining the United States. Alongside the Civil War veterans, that grave stitches together several distinct chapters of nineteenth-century American history in one small clearing.
Cemeteries like this also remind us how much of the past survives only at ground level, in family plots and community burial grounds rather than in official archives. They are where the ordinary people who actually built and settled a region left their most durable mark — and where the questions history couldn't answer, like the riddle of the 1831 stones, are quietly preserved.
If you visit
Come to a place like this expecting stillness. Pioneer cemeteries reward slow walking and close looking: read the weathered dates, notice how many cluster in the 1870s and 1880s, and let the plainness of the stones tell you about the hard years that produced them.
Look toward the center for signs of the old vault that filled with earth, and see whether you can find the paired Derrick stones with their puzzling 1831 dates — a small unsolved mystery you can ponder on the spot. Treat every marker gently; many are fragile, and the ground is a resting place first and a historic site second.
This is a detour for travelers who like their history quiet and unpolished, tucked into the Lamar County countryside. It fits well into a wandering back-roads drive through northeast Texas, the kind of stop where you turn off the engine, walk a few rows, and feel the reach of more than a century of local life.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Herbert J. Lee
- · Georgiannia W. Derrick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Thomas Holt
Honey Grove, TX
James Thomas "Tank" Holt came to Fannin County as a boy in 1849 and, after riding with the Confederate cavalry in the Civil War, turned a freighting business into a diversified fortune. He invested in ranching, a cotton oil mill, and a national bank, and even built Honey Grove's first public water system. His career traces the arc of a frontier veteran becoming a pillar of a growing Gilded Age Texas town.
Leroy Nelson DeWitt, Pioneer Citizen
Mount Joy, TX
Born in Virginia in 1840, Leroy Nelson DeWitt came to this corner of North Texas with his parents in 1854 and put down deep roots as a merchant and farmer. He married Mary Collier in 1861 and, the next year, joined the Confederacy to serve on the frontier through the end of the Civil War. Afterward he became a recognized leader in the area's civic, church, and business affairs until his death in 1918.
The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp
Petty, TX
Before the Civil War, a lone grove of persimmons stood as the only trees on a hundred-square-mile Texas prairie, a natural gathering spot where settlers swapped news and livestock. When secession came in 1861, Methodist lay minister and Mexican War veteran James Hill organized a cavalry company here and drilled his men beside the grove. When militia law barred the unit from leaving Texas, they reorganized as Company E of the 9th Texas Infantry and went on to fight at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga.
Galbraith House
Honey Grove, TX
Marshall A. Galbraith left Kentucky for Fannin County in 1847 and, after serving in a Texas Confederate cavalry regiment during the Civil War, returned to build this Greek Revival home around 1870. A farmer and businessman, he raised a family whose descendants still occupied the house when it was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1973.