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Little Hope Cemetery

Jasper, Jasper County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Located on land granted to pioneer settler Samuel Goode in 1838, this community graveyard began as a family cemetery following the death of Goode's wife Frances in 1844. Samuel was buried next to his wife in 1865, and theirs are among the unmarked graves here. the earliest marked graves, those of Annie Bell Walker and C. J. Wilson, date to 1884. Many early settlers are interred here, as well as victims of influenza and diphtheria epidemics in the early 1900s. This cemetery serves as a visible reminder of the area's pioneer heritage.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This graveyard began in sorrow on land granted to pioneer settler Samuel Goode in 1838, when his wife Frances was buried here in 1844. Samuel joined her two decades later, and their unmarked graves lie among the earliest burials in what grew into a community cemetery. The oldest marked stones date to 1884, and the grounds also hold victims of the influenza and diphtheria epidemics that swept East Texas in the early 1900s. Little Hope Cemetery remains a quiet witness to the settlers who built Jasper County.

Why it matters

The cemetery preserves the pioneer roots of Jasper County and the toll that epidemic disease took on early rural communities. It is a visible reminder of the ordinary settlers whose lives and losses shaped the East Texas frontier.

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Related people

  • · Samuel Goode
  • · Frances Goode

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Little Hope Primitive Baptist Church

Jasper, TX

As Anglo settlers pushed into the East Texas Piney Woods in the late 1830s, traveling Methodist and Baptist preachers held services in a rough building that doubled as church and schoolhouse. A new structure went up in 1890, and the Little Hope Primitive Baptist Church was formally organized in 1893 under Elder Durham Richardson. Locals affectionately nicknamed the whole settlement "Seed Tick."

Here Lived Dr. Stephen H. Everitt

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A New York-born physician who reached Texas in 1835, Stephen H. Everitt threw himself into the fight for independence just as the colony broke with Mexico. He sat as a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, put his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, and then served four years in the Senate of the new Republic of Texas. This 1936 Centennial marker records the home of one of the men who helped turn a rebellion into a functioning government.

R. C. Doom House

Jasper, TX

R. C. Doom built this East Texas home in 1856, having earlier served as a customs agent for the independent Republic of Texas before it joined the Union. Its antebellum styling and sweeping fifty-foot verandah spoke to the aspirations of a settler who had helped administer a nation before it became a state. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Campground Cemetery

Jasper, TX

Adam Byerly came to Texas from South Carolina in 1834 and received a Mexican land grant on Sandy Creek, where the site became a Methodist camp meeting ground known as Byerly Campground. Byerly sold ten acres to the church in 1843, and a cemetery for the area's African American residents took shape to the south. Its earliest marked grave is that of Tom Limbrick (1827–1908), and many former slaves, community leaders, and veterans rest here. Ties with nearby Armstrong C.M.E. Church give the site its alternate name, Armstrong Campground Cemetery.