Little Mound Baptist Church and Cemetery
Gilmer, Upshur County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Unmarked burials in this cemetery may have begun in the late 1860s, predating the founding of the church. The oldest marked grave is that of E. Hoggue, who died in 1877. One year later, in 1878, residents of the thriving pioneer village of Calloway organized Little Mount Baptist Church and met for worship in a structure near the burial ground. Situated on a steep hill called "Little Mound," the one-room building had previously served as a Union church and schoolhouse. It stood on land owned by W. C. Bradshaw, who gave the cemetery and church site to the congregation in 1881. By 1897 the original church building had become too small. Lumber from the structure was used to build another meetinghouse across the road on property donated by J. s. and Sophronia Wallis in 1902. The second structure was torn down in 1925 and again all the usable lumber was incorporated in a new church building, erected on the site of the original. Buried in this cemetery is Confederate heroine Emma Sansom (Mrs.C. B.) Johnson (1847-1900), who at age 16 led Gen. N. B. Forrest's troops across the Black River in her native state of Alabama to attack Federal forces. She later moved to Texas and joined this church.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Burials on this steep rise called "Little Mound" may reach back to the late 1860s, before residents of the pioneer village of Calloway organized Little Mount Baptist Church in 1878 in a former Union church and schoolhouse. Over the decades the congregation rebuilt three times, thriftily reusing the same lumber from one meetinghouse to the next. Among those buried here is Emma Sansom Johnson, remembered as a Confederate heroine who as a sixteen-year-old guided General Nathan Bedford Forrest's troops across a river in her native Alabama before later settling in Texas.
Why it matters
The site binds together the rhythms of frontier Texas religion and a personal thread of Civil War memory carried westward by those who resettled after the war.
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Related people
- · Emma Sansom Johnson
- · W. C. Bradshaw
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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