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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When John McCarter reached Texas in 1832, it was not yet a republic, let alone a state—it was a far northern frontier of Mexico, drawing settlers from the United States with the promise of cheap, abundant land. He was a young man from Pennsylvania stepping into a country on the edge of enormous change, four years before the events that would make Texas independent.
The Houston County of his later life, in the Piney Woods of East Texas, was settlement country: farmsteads carved out of timber, communities organized around a schoolhouse and a church, and families whose ties of blood and marriage held the whole fabric together. Land was the currency of the future, and a farm was both a livelihood and a legacy.
By the time John McCarter died in 1895, the frontier he had entered had passed through revolution, statehood, a civil war, and Reconstruction. The obelisk that marks his grave rose over a landscape that had transformed utterly across his long life—and over a small plot of family ground that had quietly become something more permanent than any farm.
People & events
John McCarter married Jane Lasiter in August 1854, and together they raised a large family—nine children, whose names read like a roll call of a nineteenth-century household: Fisher, James, Robert, Mattie, Belle, Mary Susan, Kate, Elizabeth, and David Christopher. Their farmstead stood in this vicinity, and like many pioneer families, they set aside a corner of their own land as a burial ground.
John was the first laid to rest here in 1895, beneath the large obelisk that still anchors the cemetery. He was not alone for long. Other early burials followed—Joe Hopper the same year, and Margaret A. Fulgham Luce in 1897, whose husband Isom Cariel Luce joined her in 1898. Isom's gravestone records his Civil War service, a small stone testament to how the great national conflict reached even into the family plots of rural Texas.
In 1907, Jane McCarter did something that turned a family burial ground into a community institution: she formally deeded the land as a cemetery for the surrounding settlement, then known as the Grounds Schoolhouse community and later as Jones Schoolhouse. Jane died two years later, in 1909. The ground she gave now holds generations of McCarter and Luce descendants, along with descendants of George and Catherine Rice Grounds, for whom the community first took its name. A cemetery association still gathers each year to tend the graves.
Its place in the American story
A family cemetery like this is one of the most honest records of how America was settled. There are no famous battles here, no signed documents that changed the course of history—just the ordinary arithmetic of a country filling in: a man arrives, marries, raises children, farms a piece of ground, and is buried in it.
These burial grounds are also a kind of paper trail written in stone. Dates of death, the presence of a Civil War veteran's marker, the shift of a community's name from Grounds to Jones—each detail lets us reconstruct the movement of people across the nineteenth century, from the older states eastward to the open lands of Texas. Multiply this one plot by thousands scattered across the South and the West, and you have the demographic story of a nation on the move.
Jane McCarter's 1907 deed captures something essential, too: the way private family life so often shaded into public institution on the frontier. A cemetery, a schoolhouse, a named community—these were how scattered farmsteads became a place. The annual gatherings that continue today are the living end of a chain that reaches back to the Republic.
If you visit
Look first for the large obelisk—John McCarter's marker, and the oldest grave in the cemetery. From there, the ground opens like a family tree carved in stone, with McCarter and Luce descendants gathered around the founders, and the Grounds family nearby, a reminder of the community's original name.
Slow down at the older stones. Isom Cariel Luce's marker, noting his Civil War service, is the kind of detail that turns a quiet country cemetery into a window on the wider national story. Weathered dates from the 1890s tell you how young this place is by the measure of settlement, and how much of East Texas history is packed into a single generation.
This is a working cemetery, still cared for by a family association that meets each year to tend the graves—so visit with the respect you would give any active burial ground. Set among the Piney Woods near Crockett, it makes a thoughtful stop for anyone tracing the roots of rural Texas, a place where the ordinary people who built the countryside are remembered by name.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John McCarter
- · Jane Lasiter McCarter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
John Edens Cemetery
Grapeland vicinity, TX
This family cemetery on John Edens's land holds some of the earliest known victims of the Edens-Madden massacre, a violent attack near here in October 1838 during the turbulent early years of the Texas Republic. The dead included Edens's wife, several of his children and grandchildren, and neighbors—more than thirty people were reportedly buried on the site, among them the first sheriff of Houston County. Only four marked graves survived into the 21st century, including that of John Edens himself.
Whitehead Cemetery
Houston County, TX
The Henry Whitehead family left Mississippi in the 1850s and put down roots in Houston County around 1862, in the midst of the Civil War in which Henry served the Confederacy. He founded this burial ground in 1870 with the grave of his first wife, Mary Ann "Polly." Their descendants, beginning with their son Aaron, have tended the two-acre cemetery ever since, where more than sixty graves now rest.
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.
San Pedro Community
San Pedro, TX
In the 1830s, families from the southeastern states settled along San Pedro Creek beside the stage route to Rusk, where Joel W. Stowe's stage stop and store became a post office in 1842. The community boiled molasses from ribbon cane, raised cotton and corn, and milled its own lumber, gathering around churches, a cemetery, and a school. Its numbers ebbed during the two world wars before rebounding in the 1960s.