Long Meadows Cemetery
Lampasas, Lampasas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
PLEASANT C. COX, WHO PATENTED THIS LAND, FIRST VISITED THE AREA IN THE 1830s. HE AND HIS WIFE, MARTHA JANE (BYBEE), CAME TO TEXAS BY WAGON TRAIN FROM MISSOURI IN 1851, SETTLING HERE IN 1855. PLEASANT COX WAS ONE OF THE PETITIONERS TO CREATE LAMPASAS COUNTY IN 1856. MOST OF THE DOZENS OF BURIALS HERE ARE UNMARKED, WITH SOME PREDATING THE EARLIEST MARKED BURIAL OF JOSEPH COX (1867-1872). THE LAST BURIAL WAS FOR MARTHA JANE COX, WHO DIED IN 1912. AFTER THE FAMILY SOLD THE PROPERTY IN 1922, THE CEMETERY FELL INTO DISREPAIR. DESCENDANTS BEGAN TO PRESERVE AND RESTORE THE SITE IN THE 1980s. THE CEMETERY, WHICH FEATURES LIMESTONE MARKERS AND FIELDSTONES AND INTERIOR FENCING, REMAINS A VALUABLE RECORD OF PIONEER LIFE IN LAMPASAS COUNTY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pleasant C. Cox first saw this land in the 1830s and returned by wagon train from Missouri in 1851, settling here and helping petition for the creation of Lampasas County in 1856. Most of the dozens of graves on his patented land are unmarked, the earliest belonging to a Cox child; his widow, Martha Jane, was the last laid to rest here in 1912. Limestone markers, fieldstones, and interior fencing still record a founding pioneer family.
Why it matters
Family burial grounds like this preserve the story of the wagon-train pioneers who organized Texas's frontier counties in the mid-nineteenth century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1850s, the Texas Hill Country was the raw edge of American settlement. The Republic of Texas had joined the Union in 1845, and the promise of cheap, fertile land pulled families westward by the thousands. Missourians, in particular, loaded wagons and pointed them south and west, following well-worn overland trails toward a frontier that was still being surveyed and named.
The land around what became Lampasas County was prized for its clear springs and limestone hills, but it was also unorganized country. Before a place could hold court, collect taxes, or keep records, settlers had to petition the state to carve out a county and give it a seat. That civic scaffolding — the paperwork of belonging — was being built at the same moment the first cabins went up.
This was the world Pleasant C. Cox stepped into. A man who first laid eyes on the area in the 1830s and came back to stay two decades later was, by frontier standards, a founder — someone present at the creation of the community, not an inheritor of it.
People & events
Pleasant C. Cox first visited this stretch of central Texas in the 1830s, well before it had a county name. He and his wife, Martha Jane Bybee Cox, made the longer commitment in 1851, traveling from Missouri by wagon train and settling on this land in 1855. Cox patented the property — meaning he secured formal title to it — and put down the roots that would tie his family to the place for generations.
He was more than a settler; he was an organizer. In 1856 he was among the petitioners who asked the state to create Lampasas County, an act that turned scattered homesteads into a governed community. That same land became the family's burying ground.
Most of the dozens of graves here were never marked with carved stone, and some predate the earliest marked burial — that of a Cox child, Joseph, whose short life spanned 1867 to 1872. The last person laid to rest here was Martha Jane herself, in 1912, six decades after she rode into Texas beside her husband. After the family sold the property in 1922 the cemetery fell into neglect, until descendants began restoring it in the 1980s — a second act of stewardship a century after the first.
Its place in the American story
The family burial ground is one of the quiet, essential institutions of the American frontier. Long before there were public cemeteries, churches with yards, or municipal records, a family set aside a corner of its own patented land to hold its dead. These plots are where the nation's westward expansion is written not in treaties or battles but in birth and death dates on limestone.
Cox's story also captures how American local government was actually built — from the ground up, by residents petitioning to organize the very counties that would govern them. Multiply this one signature on one 1856 petition across hundreds of counties, and you have the machinery by which a continent was turned into a republic of courthouses and county seats.
That many of the graves are unmarked is itself part of the story. The frontier was hard on stone and record-keeping alike, and the anonymous dead — the people whose names the land no longer remembers — are as much a part of the pioneer experience as the founders whose names endure.
If you visit
Come for the texture of the place. Look for the hand-cut limestone markers and the rougher fieldstones set upright to mark graves that never received a carved inscription — the difference between the two tells you something about which families had the time, money, and stonecutter to spare.
Notice the interior fencing that divides the ground. Small iron or wire enclosures within a cemetery usually mark family sub-plots, a way of keeping kin together even in a shared burial ground. Walk the space slowly; much of what is here lies beneath unmarked earth, so the quiet emptiness between stones is not really empty.
This is a modest, out-of-the-way stop rather than a grand monument, and that is its charm. Pair it with a drive through the Lampasas County hill country and you'll understand the landscape that drew a Missouri family across half a continent — springs, limestone, and wide, open country that once sat at the very front of the American map.
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
- · Pleasant C. Cox
- · Martha Jane (Bybee) Cox
Themes & tags
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