Merrilltown Cemetery
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THIS BURIAL GROUND HAS SERVED THE SURROUNDING AREA SINCE THE EARLY 1850s. MOST OF THOSE INTERRED HERE LIVED IN THE MERRILLTOWN COMMUNITY, WHICH CAPTAIN NELSON MERRELL (d. 1879) ESTABLISHED WHEN HE SETTLED HERE IN 1837. HE OPERATED THE POST OFFICE AND A STORE IN THE COMMUNITY. CAPTAIN MERRELL DEEDED THIS PROPERTY TO TRUSTEES OF SCHOOL DISTRICT #9 IN 1856 FOR USE AS A BURIAL GROUND; HE ALSO DEEDED LAND FOR A CHURCH AND SCHOOL. MERRELL SERVED AS TRAVIS COUNTY COMMISSIONER (1852 – 1859) AND ASSISTED WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS AVENUE; HE IS ALSO RECOGNIZED AS A TEXAS RANGER FOR HIS WORK IN LEADING A GROUP OF RANGERS IN PROTECTING AUSTIN FROM ATTACKS BY NATIVE AMERICANS. THE OLDEST MARKED GRAVE IN MERRILLTOWN CEMETERY IS OF JULIA MERRELL (d. 1852), THE YOUNG DAUGHTER OF NELSON AND RACHEL MERRELL (d. 1862). ANOTHER NOTED BURIAL HERE IS OF LEMUEL SUMMERWELL WOODWARD (1813-1891), ANOTHER TRAVIS COUNTY COMMISSIONER (1860-1864). OTHERS INTERRED INCLUDE COMMUNITY LEADERS AND VETERANS OF MILITARY CONFLICTS DATING TO THE CIVIL WAR. CEMETERY FEATURES INCLUDE CURBING, VERTICAL STONES, OBELISKS, A WOODMAN OF THE WORLD GRAVE MARKER AND INDEPENDENT ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS (I.O.O.F.) GRAVE MARKERS. MERRILLTOWN RESIDENTS MAINTAINED THE GROUNDS UNTIL 1982, WHEN THE ROUND ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT WAS NAMED THE CEMETERY’S TRUSTEE. IN 1996, THE CALVARY WORSHIP CENTER ASSUMED THIS CHARITABLE TRUST FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, AND TODAY CONTINUES TO CARE FOR THE BURIAL GROUND. ALTHOUGH THIS AREA WAS ANNEXED INTO AUSTIN, MERRILLTOWN CEMETERY PERSISTS AS A REMINDER OF THE MERRILLTOWN COMMUNITY, AND SERVES AS A RECORD OF THIS AREA’S EARLY PIONEERS. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Captain Nelson Merrell settled here in 1837, opening a store and post office and giving his name to the Merrilltown community. He deeded land for a church, a school, and this burial ground, served as a Travis County commissioner, helped build Congress Avenue in Austin, and led a company of Rangers guarding the settlement. The cemetery's graves—marked by obelisks, fraternal-order stones, and curbing—hold community leaders and veterans reaching back to the Civil War.
Why it matters
Merrilltown Cemetery preserves the memory of a frontier community that Austin eventually absorbed, capturing how one settler-official could shape a county's early civic and religious life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Nelson Merrell arrived in 1837, the settlement that would become Austin was barely an idea and Texas was a brand-new independent republic. This was raw frontier: a country of open prairie and scattered cabins where the line between wilderness and civilization was thin and often dangerous. Building a community here meant building nearly everything from scratch — a store to trade at, a post office to reach the outside world, a school for the children, a church for Sundays, and, inevitably, a place to bury the dead.
The early 1850s, when this burial ground came into use, were formative years for the whole area. The capital city nearby was taking shape, county government was organizing itself, and small communities like Merrilltown were knitting the surrounding countryside into something settled and permanent. Roads, public offices, and civic institutions were all being invented on the spot by the handful of people willing to do the work.
It was also a frontier still marked by conflict. Central Texas in these decades sat along a contested edge, and the settlers who came here understood that protecting a young community was part of the price of living on it. That backdrop of both civic ambition and frontier danger runs through everything this cemetery preserves.
People & events
At the center of it all stood Captain Nelson Merrell, who settled here in 1837 and gave the Merrilltown community both its name and much of its early shape. He ran the store and the post office, the twin hubs of frontier life, and he gave generously of his land: he deeded property for a church, for a school, and — in 1856, to the trustees of School District No. 9 — for this burial ground. A single settler, in other words, laid the groundwork for the community's faith, its learning, and its final resting place.
Merrell's reach extended well beyond his own community. He served as a Travis County commissioner through the 1850s and helped with the construction of Congress Avenue, the great central artery of Austin. He is also remembered as a Texas Ranger, recognized for leading a group of Rangers in defending Austin from attacks — the frontier duty that shadowed civic life in those years. His was a life spent building and guarding a new country at the same time.
The graves gathered here carry that story onward. The oldest marked grave is that of Julia Merrell, the young daughter of Nelson and Rachel Merrell, who died in 1852 — a reminder of how often the frontier's dead were its children. Nearby rests another county commissioner, Lemuel Summerwell Woodward (1813–1891), along with community leaders and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War. The stones themselves — curbing, upright markers, obelisks, and the emblems of fraternal orders like the Woodmen of the World and the Odd Fellows — read like a catalog of nineteenth-century community life.
Its place in the American story
Merrilltown Cemetery captures a pattern that played out across the American frontier: how a single enterprising settler could seed an entire community. In providing the store, the post office, and the land for church, school, and cemetery, Nelson Merrell embodied the way civic and religious life was often bootstrapped by private individuals long before formal government could reach the countryside.
The site also speaks to the double life of the frontier — building and defending at once. Merrell helped construct Congress Avenue and served in county government while also riding as a Ranger to guard the settlement. That blend of public office, road-building, and frontier defense is the story of how central Texas was both organized and made safe enough to grow, a chapter in the larger national drama of westward expansion.
And there is the quiet lesson of what endured. The Merrilltown community was eventually annexed into a growing Austin, its separate identity absorbed by the city that spread out to meet it. Yet the cemetery persists, cared for over the years by residents, then a school district, and later a local church. Across the country, such burial grounds are often the last surviving trace of communities that cities swallowed whole — the memory of a place that no longer appears on the map.
If you visit
Approach this as an outdoor museum of nineteenth-century memorial art. Look for the range of features the ground preserves: stone curbing outlining family plots, tall obelisks, upright headstones weathered by generations, and the distinctive emblems of fraternal orders — the tree-stump markers of the Woodmen of the World and the linked symbols of the Odd Fellows. Each was a way a community said who its people were.
Seek out the founding family as you walk. The grave of little Julia Merrell, the oldest marked burial here, anchors the whole story, and around it lie the community leaders, commissioners, and veterans who built and defended this corner of Travis County. Reading their stones is a way of meeting the people behind the place name.
Though the neighborhood around it has long since been folded into Austin, the cemetery endures as a pocket of the past amid the modern city, still tended today. Recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery, it makes a thoughtful stop for anyone curious about how the capital's countryside was first settled — a small, green reminder that a whole community once lived, worshiped, and rests here.
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
- · Nelson Merrell
- · Lemuel Summerwell Woodward
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