Lost Creek Cemetery
May, Brown County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The original Hog Creek Cemetery was established in the 1870s, about one-half mile southwest of this site; after only two burials, the community chose to relocate, reportedly because of the rocky soil there. J. W. Graves (d. 1874) was the first person buried at this location, then owned by H.C. Hancock. Area residents continued to use the site and, in 1892, J.C. Hensley (Henslee) and his wife, L.E., deeded it to Brown County for cemetery and church purposes. A chapel was constructed by 1932, and the Hog Creek Cemetery Association organized in 1949, later changing its name, and that of the cemetery, to Lost Creek. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The first burial ground here began in the 1870s as Hog Creek Cemetery, sited about a half-mile away until rocky soil prompted the community to move it after only two graves. The relocated plot took its first burial in 1874 and was formally deeded to Brown County in 1892 for cemetery and church use. A chapel followed by 1932, and when the local association reorganized in 1949 it renamed both itself and the cemetery Lost Creek.
Why it matters
The cemetery's shifting names and locations trace how frontier Texas communities improvised their own institutions of faith and memory as they put down roots.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Windham Cemetery
Brownwood, TX
Named for early settler and cattle rancher S. R. Windham, this Brown County cemetery dates to 1879, its earliest grave marking a death that July. Among those buried here is Martin Shelby Byrd, a storekeeper and postmaster for whom the Byrds community was named, along with victims of the early-20th-century influenza epidemic and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars. In use for well over a century, it still serves the surrounding community.
Blake Cemetery
May, TX
As settlers poured into Brown County in the late 1800s, the Hog Valley community formed and organized a Baptist church by 1894, holding services in the schoolhouse until permanent churches were built. When a post office opened, its postmaster asked that it be named Blake in honor of his son, and the whole community gradually took that name. The first burial in Blake Cemetery came in 1901, and the grounds—filled with everything from marble monuments to hand-welded steel crosses marking once-unmarked graves—still receive the care of a cemetery association determined to preserve local memory.
May United Methodist Church
May, TX
Methodism reached this corner of Brown County with circuit-riding preachers in the 1860s, holding services in private homes before Mt. Zion Methodist Church was organized in 1882. The May Methodist Church formally took shape in 1886, gathering in a schoolhouse until members built their own one-room church in 1894 and later a brick sanctuary with stained glass. Fire destroyed that building in 2000, but the congregation's century-plus of service through depression, drought, and war endured.
The May Community
May, TX
The land around May began as part of an 1827 Mexican grant to empresario John Cameron and drew its first pioneer families in the 1870s, who quickly organized Baptist and Methodist churches and a one-room school. Nathan L. May opened a trading post in 1879 and became the first postmaster, and by 1907 the village had a blacksmith, general store, newspaper, and bank. Its early growth peaked in 1911 when the railroad arrived.