McCarty Cemetery
Angelina County, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1860, Orange McCarty, Sr. (1813-1897) and his wife, Mary Arrington (1820-1881), purchased 2200 acres in the Antonio Solis survey that included this site. Their move here from Mississippi was delayed by the outbreak of the Civil War; two McCarty sons died in action fighting for the South. Join by the Arrington and McCall families, the remaining McCartys finally arrived here in 1866 and built a log cabin overlooking Jack Creek. This acre of land was set aside for a cemetery. The earliest marked grave indicates it was in use by 1873. The McCarty Cemetery Association maintains this resting place for these Angelina County Pioneers.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1860 Orange McCarty and his wife Mary Arrington bought a large tract in Angelina County, but their planned move from Mississippi stalled when the Civil War erupted and two of their sons died fighting for the Confederacy. The surviving family, joined by the Arringtons and McCalls, finally settled here in 1866 and built a log cabin above Jack Creek, setting aside this acre for burials that were in use by 1873. It endures as the resting place of a founding Angelina County pioneer family.
Why it matters
The cemetery captures the arc of a Southern frontier family whose westward move was interrupted and reshaped by the Civil War, a story repeated across the post-war South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The McCarty Cemetery marks the arrival of a Southern family on the Texas frontier at the worst possible moment — right as the country tore itself apart. In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Orange McCarty and his wife, Mary Arrington, bought a large tract in Angelina County, in the timbered heart of East Texas, and prepared to move west from Mississippi.
This was classic frontier ambition: a family with means buying 2,200 acres and setting out to build a new life on cheaper, more plentiful land farther west. Angelina County was pine-and-creek country, thinly settled, the kind of place where a family could carve a homestead out of the woods and become founders of a community.
But the timing caught them in the great rupture of American history. The secession crisis and the outbreak of war in 1861 froze plans like theirs all across the South. Journeys were postponed, men marched off to fight, and families waited out the conflict before they could take up the lives they had already paid for.
People & events
Orange McCarty, Sr., born in 1813, and his wife Mary Arrington, born in 1820, are the heart of this story. They had bought their Angelina County land and meant to move, but the war intervened — and it took from them before they ever arrived. Two of their sons died in action fighting for the South, a loss carried in the family's memory long before the family itself reached this ground.
When the war ended, the surviving McCartys finally came. In 1866, joined by the Arrington and McCall families, they arrived and built a log cabin overlooking Jack Creek. You can picture it plainly: a family that had waited six years and buried two sons, at last raising the walls of a home on the land they had held onto through it all.
An acre of that land was set aside for a cemetery, and the earliest marked grave shows it was in use by 1873. Today the McCarty Cemetery Association tends the ground, keeping the resting place of these Angelina County pioneers.
Its place in the American story
The arc of the McCarty family is the arc of the post-Civil War South in a single household. A move west, interrupted by the war; sons lost to the Confederacy; and then, in the aftermath, a family regathering itself and starting over. That pattern repeated in countless homes across the defeated South, and the cemetery is a quiet monument to all of them.
It also captures something essential about how the American frontier was actually settled — not in a smooth, steady march, but in fits and starts, shaped by events far beyond any family's control. The McCartys' westward migration was reshaped by a national catastrophe, delayed by years and marked by grief, before it could be completed.
That two of the family's sons never made the journey, while the rest built a lasting community on the land, is the kind of detail that turns statistics back into people. The Civil War's cost is usually counted in battlefield numbers; here it is counted in one family's empty places at the table, and in a homestead begun late and against the weight of loss.
If you visit
This is a rural East Texas cemetery in the pine-and-creek country of Angelina County, overlooking the drainage of Jack Creek where the family's log cabin once stood. The landscape has changed, but the setting still tells you why they chose it — high ground near good water.
Seek out the oldest graves, the ones from the 1870s that mark the founding of the burial ground, and let yourself think about the six-year gap between the 1860 land purchase and the family's 1866 arrival. That gap is the war, and it is the real story of this place even though no battle was fought anywhere near here.
Because a family association still cares for the cemetery, you'll likely find it tended and quiet. It suits a reflective, unhurried drive through the back roads of the Angelina County timberlands, the kind of trip where the destinations are small and the reward is the sense of stepping into an ordinary family's extraordinary endurance. Come respectfully, and leave it as you found it.
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
- · Orange McCarty Sr.
- · Mary Arrington McCarty
Themes & tags
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