McCarter Cemetery
Crockett, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Pennsylvania in 1813, John McCarter (McCarty) came to Texas in 1832. He married Jane Lasiter in August 1854, and the couple had nine children: Fisher, James, Robert, Mattie, Belle, Mary Susan, Kate, Elizabeth and David Christopher. The family's farmstead was located in this vicinity, where the family also established a cemetery. John (d. 1895) was the first to be interred here, and his grave is marked by a large obelisk. Other early burials included Joe Hopper (d. 1895), Margaret A. Fulgham Luce (d. 1897) and her husband, Isom Cariel Luce (d. 1898), whose gravestone indicates his service in the Civil War. In 1907, Jane McCarter (d. 1909) formally deeded the land as a cemetery for use by the Grounds Schoolhouse community, now known as Jones Schoolhouse community. Today, the cemetery is the final resting place of many McCarter and Luce descendants, as well as descendants of George and Catherine Rice Grounds, for whom the community was originally named. A cemetery association maintains the burial ground, holding annual gatherings to tend to the graves of family members and early area settlers. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John McCarter was born in Pennsylvania in 1813 and came to Texas in 1832, four years before the Republic itself was born, settling with his wife Jane and their nine children on a farmstead in Houston County. Like many pioneer families, they set aside a corner of their land as a burial ground, and John became its first occupant when he died in 1895. In 1907 Jane formally deeded the plot to the surrounding community, tying the graveyard to the schoolhouse settlement that grew up nearby. Descendants still gather each year to tend the graves.
Why it matters
Family cemeteries like this one are the paper trail of American settlement—recording, headstone by headstone, the ordinary pioneers whose farms and schoolhouses became the towns of Texas.
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Related people
- · John McCarter
- · Jane Lasiter McCarter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Grounds Cemetery
Houston County, TX
George and Catherine Grounds settled this part of East Texas around 1829, near the earlier arrival of Catherine's brother Joseph R. Rice. The cemetery was established in 1860 with George's burial and legally set aside by 1883, and it holds mostly Grounds family members. George's original red sandstone marker was replaced with granite in 1993, but the graveyard remains a representative example of the historic family burying grounds of the region.
Stage Coach Inn
Crockett, TX
Joseph D. Rice, Sr., who came to Texas in 1828 during the last years of Mexican rule, built this house in the piney woods of East Texas. By 1838, under the Republic of Texas, it had become a designated stopping place on the stage road running from old Nacogdoches down to Crockett. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936, its centennial year.
Davis Cemetery
Grapeland, TX
Established around 1862, this Houston County burial ground took root in the heart of the Civil War, when East Texas was a Confederate homefront far from the fighting but bound up in its losses. Set among the farms and pine woods of Grapeland, it reflects the settlement of the region by families who had pushed into East Texas in the antebellum decades. Its Historic Texas Cemetery designation preserves that link to the war years.
Concord Cemetery
Crockett, TX
In 1889 Armistead Albert Aldrich gave three acres to the Concord Presbyterian Church for a sanctuary and graveyard in the piney woods of Houston County. The first burial came in 1895, and over the decades the wooded ground filled with the family names of the surrounding farm community, along with veterans and members of fraternal lodges. In 1963 the church handed the land to a cemetery association that still keeps lots reserved for descendants of those already resting here.