McRae Cemetery
San Augustine, San Augustine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Minutes of the McRae church state that "at a place called Union Church, six miles southwest of the town of San Augustine, a number of persons assembled on this, the 15th day of October 1882 . . . The following persons at their own request, were dismissed from the First Presbyterian Church of San Augustine and were organized." The church was first named Wilson Church, after the organizer of the First Presbyterian Church in Texas, Rev. Hugh Wilson. However, the church’s name soon changed to McRae Church, in honor of Rev. D.A. McRae of North Carolina, who helped to organize the congregation and served as the first pastor. Captain T.W. Blount offered land at this site to the congregation for the construction of a church, and a frame structure was completed and dedicated in October of 1884. Captain Blount had signed over the property for the church and cemetery to the church trustees in February of 1884. The cemetery at this site had been in use for several years prior to the organization of the church. The oldest marked burial at the cemetery is that of Willy Myrick, who died in 1866. Willy was the son of John Myrick and Adeline Roundtree; John Myrick was listed in the church minutes as a member in 1883. Ela Jane Pritchett, the two-year-old daughter of founding member J.C. Pritchett, died just seven days after the church’s founding and was buried at the cemetery. On April 5, 1920, after forty years of service, Rev. D.A. McRae was laid to rest in the cemetery that bears his name. Although the church was dissolved by the Brazos Presbytery in 1969, the cemetery continues to be active and is cared for by the McRae Cemetery Association. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2007
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1882 a group of worshippers near San Augustine, dismissed from the town's First Presbyterian Church, organized a new congregation at a place called Union Church. First named for Hugh Wilson, organizer of the first Presbyterian church in Texas, it was soon renamed McRae in honor of the North Carolina minister who helped found it and served as first pastor. Captain T.W. Blount deeded land for a church and the adjoining cemetery, whose oldest marked grave predates the congregation to 1866; though the church dissolved in 1969, the cemetery remains active.
Why it matters
McRae preserves the layered story of frontier Presbyterianism in East Texas, where a burial ground outlived the congregation that gathered around it and still anchors community memory.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, East Texas was rebuilding. San Augustine County sat in the old cotton country near the Louisiana line, a landscape of small farms, pine woods, and scattered settlements where families gathered as much around their churches as around their fields. This was the Reconstruction era giving way to the Gilded Age, a time when rural Southern communities knit themselves back together congregation by congregation.
Presbyterianism had deep roots in Texas by 1882. Organized religion on the frontier often arrived ahead of courthouses and railroads, and a church was frequently the first formal institution a settlement could claim. For scattered farm families, a congregation six miles outside of town was worth the ride: it offered not only worship but a calendar, a community, and a burying ground.
That last point matters here. The land southwest of San Augustine already held graves before any church was built on it. In frontier country, a cemetery often came first, marking where a community had already begun to lay down its dead and, with them, its claim to a place.
People & events
In October 1882, a group of worshippers who had been dismissed at their own request from the First Presbyterian Church of San Augustine gathered at a spot called Union Church and organized a new congregation. They first named it Wilson Church, honoring Rev. Hugh Wilson, remembered as the organizer of the first Presbyterian church in Texas—a nod to the denomination's founding generation in the state.
The name soon changed to McRae, in honor of Rev. D.A. McRae of North Carolina, who had helped organize the congregation and became its first pastor. Captain T.W. Blount gave the community its footing in the most literal way: he offered the land, signing the property over to the church trustees in early 1884, and a frame church was completed and dedicated later that year.
The cemetery tells the human story most plainly. Its oldest marked grave belongs to a child, Willy Myrick, who died in 1866—years before the church itself existed—whose father was later listed among the congregation's members. Just seven days after the church's founding, two-year-old Ela Jane Pritchett, daughter of a founding member, was buried here too. And in 1920, after four decades of service, Rev. McRae was laid to rest in the ground that carries his name.
Its place in the American story
McRae Cemetery is a small window onto a very American pattern: how faith communities organized themselves across a still-forming countryside, and how those communities took root and endured. Across the post-war South and the expanding West, congregations formed, split, renamed themselves, and anchored the social life of places too small to appear on most maps.
There is a larger truth here about how communities remember themselves. Churches can dissolve—this one was formally dissolved in 1969—but the cemetery it gathered around remains active, tended by an association of the living. A burial ground often outlasts the institution that created it, becoming the most durable record a rural community leaves behind.
It is also a reminder that a cemetery is a primary source. The dates on its stones—an 1866 child's grave, a burial one week after a founding, a pastor's forty years distilled into a single marker—are history written by the people who lived it, not by later interpreters.
If you visit
Come for the quiet. A rural East Texas cemetery like this rewards a slow walk more than a quick stop; the story is spread across the stones, and reading them in sequence is the whole point.
Look for the range of dates. The oldest marked grave reaches back to 1866, before the congregation formed, so you're standing in ground that predates the church that gave the place its name. Search out the founding-era graves and the pastor's own resting place, and you can trace four decades of a small community's life in a few paces.
This is a place best folded into a broader wander through historic San Augustine County, one of the oldest settled corners of Texas. Treat it as a moment of reflection between larger stops—and remember it is a working cemetery cared for by descendants and neighbors, so visit with the respect you'd want shown to your own.
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
- · Hugh Wilson
- · D.A. McRae
- · T.W. Blount
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Thomas Cemetery
San Augustine, TX
In 1822 Benjamin Thomas answered an advertisement calling families to Stephen F. Austin's new colony, and after waiting months at Natchitoches for an escort that never came, his large household pushed on along El Camino Real to found the Thomas Settlement in San Augustine County. A store, blacksmith, gristmill and sawmill grew up around them, and their children served the emerging Republic and State of Texas in arms, ministry, law and commerce. Today the two-acre cemetery, its oldest graves marked by native fieldstones, is the only physical trace of that once-thriving community.
Teel Family Burying Ground
San Augustine, TX
This burying ground began in 1856 when George W. Teel was laid to rest beneath a pear tree by his home. Teel and his wife Rebecca had come from Arkansas in 1824 as colonists in Stephen F. Austin's 'Old Three Hundred,' later settling here to farm and keep an inn; he also served as a university trustee and fought in the Battle of Nacogdoches and the Texas War for Independence. Kin buried alongside him include a son who served as a Confederate soldier and county officeholder.
Home of Thomas S. McFarland
San Augustine, TX
Thomas S. McFarland was a surveyor, soldier, and statesman of the Texas Revolution and early republic. He served as aide-de-camp at the 1832 Battle of Nacogdoches, laid out the town of San Augustine in 1833, fought in the Texan army in 1836, and later sat in the Congress of the Republic of Texas before serving as chief justice of San Augustine County. The State of Texas marked his home in 1936 to honor a founder of East Texas civic life.
Rev. Samuel A. Williams
San Augustine, TX
Born in Tennessee around 1804, Samuel A. Williams became the first Methodist minister regularly stationed in East Texas, arriving in 1838 when the Republic of Texas was made a district of the church. Riding circuits out of San Augustine and Nacogdoches, he organized far-flung congregations and chaired the region's early Methodist conferences. A respected preacher, he retired in 1863 and was buried at his San Augustine home.