Mixon Cemetery
Jacksonville, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
MIXON CEMETERY SETTLERS FROM TENNESSEE, ALABAMA, GEORGIA AND THE CAROLINAS, INCLUDING THE BLANTON, BRALY, DICKEY, LANGSTON, LONG, MUSICK, SHAW, STOCKTON AND THOMAS FAMILIES, ESTABLISHED PINE SPRINGS COMMUNITY (LATER MIXON) IN THE 1850s. IN 1853, JOSIAH THOMAS DEDICATED 9.7 ACRES OF LAND ON THE WESTERN SIDE OF HIS TWO-THIRDS LEAGUE OF A HEADRIGHT FOR CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS PURPOSES. AFTER THE LAND CHANGED HANDS SEVERAL TIMES, A MAY 22, 1883 DEED CONVEYED THE TRACT FROM S. A. AND F. M. BRALY TO THREE TRUSTEES, S. K. BRALY, MOSES LANGSTON, AND L. T. WILLINGHAM, REPRESENTING THE LOCAL CHURCHES – METHODIST EPISCOPAL SOUTH, CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN AND MISSIONARY BAPTIST. THE OLDEST MARKED GRAVE IN MIXON CEMETERY IS FOR OCTAVIO BRALY (APR. 11, 1853 – JUN. 12, 1854). MANY OF THE OLDEST BURIAL SITES ARE MARKED WITH LOCAL RED IRON ORE ROCK. TRADITION STATES THERE ALSO MAY BE UNMARKED GRAVES FOR MEMBERS OF LOCAL INDIAN TRIBES. MORE THAN 125 VETERANS HAVE MARKED GRAVES, INCLUDING SOLDIERS FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO PRESENT. MANY OF THE 22 CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS BURIED HERE SERVED IN COMPANY G, 22ND REGIMENT OF THE TEXAS INFANTRY. GRAVESTONE MATERIALS INCLUDE LIMESTONE AND GRANITE. MANY LARGE OBELISKS AND WOODMEN OF THE WORLD MARKERS ARE PROMINENT. IN THE 1940s, BRICK COLUMNS AND A METAL ARCHWAY WERE PLACED ALONG THE PERIMETER. THE LANDSCAPE WAS SCRAPED EARTH UNTIL THE 1950s, AND HAS BEEN MOWED GRASS SINCE THAT TIME. THE MIXON CEMETERY ASSOCIATION BOARD ENSURES THAT THE TRADITIONS OF THE FOUNDERS CONTINUE WHILE ACTIVE BURIALS OCCUR. A MEMORIAL SERVICE AND DINNER ARE HELD YEARLY. MIXON CEMETERY CONTINUES TO BE USED AND REMAINS A TESTAMENT TO THE PIONEERING MEN AND WOMEN OF THE COMMUNITY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas founded the Pine Springs community — later Mixon — in the 1850s, and in 1853 Josiah Thomas set aside land for churches and religious use. The cemetery's oldest marked grave dates to 1854, with many early burials marked by local red iron-ore rock, and tradition holds that members of local Indian tribes lie in unmarked graves. More than 125 veterans rest here, from the War of 1812 to the present, including twenty-two Confederate soldiers.
Why it matters
Mixon Cemetery layers Southern migration, Native presence, and two centuries of military service into a single Cherokee County burial ground still tended by descendants.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The 1850s in East Texas were a decade of arrival. With the young state's land opening to settlement, families streamed in from across the older South — Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas — looking for good ground and room to grow. They tended to settle in clusters of related families, and the community that grew up around this cemetery was one such cluster, first called Pine Springs and later renamed Mixon.
Land in this era often came through the headright system, the grants that Texas used to reward and attract settlers. It was out of one such large grant that a founder set aside acreage specifically for churches and religious use in 1853 — an early sign that this was meant to be a permanent community, with a spiritual center as well as farms.
The country these families entered was still close to the frontier. Native peoples had long lived in and moved through this part of Texas, and the memory of that presence lingered in the community's own traditions even as the newcomers cleared land and raised their meetinghouses.
People & events
The story here begins with a gift of land. In 1853 Josiah Thomas dedicated nearly ten acres from the western side of his headright grant for churches and religious purposes, planting the seed of the community that would grow around it. Over the following decades the tract passed through several hands until, in 1883, it was formally conveyed to three trustees who represented the local congregations — Methodist Episcopal South, Cumberland Presbyterian, and Missionary Baptist. That single deed, shared among three denominations, tells you how central faith was to holding the settlement together.
The cemetery's oldest marked grave belongs to a Braly child who lived barely more than a year in the early 1850s — a reminder of how fragile life was on the frontier, and how often the first graves in such places were the smallest. Many of the earliest resting places were marked not with carved headstones but with the local red iron-ore rock that the land itself provided.
Tradition also holds that members of local Indian tribes lie here in unmarked graves, their presence remembered even without a stone to name them. And more than a hundred and twenty-five veterans rest in this ground, their service spanning from the War of 1812 to the present day. Among them are twenty-two Confederate soldiers, many of whom served together in Company G of the 22nd Regiment of the Texas Infantry.
Its place in the American story
Mixon Cemetery is a layered record of how a piece of the American South was settled and remembered. The migration that filled it — families moving west from the seaboard and the interior South in the 1850s — was part of a vast national movement that carried Southern culture, agriculture, and faith into Texas in the years before the Civil War.
The ground also preserves the meeting of peoples that settlement so often erased. That the community itself passes down the memory of Native graves among its own is a small but honest acknowledgment that the newcomers built on land that was not empty when they came.
And the sweep of veterans here — from an early republic conflict through two centuries of American wars — turns this rural churchyard into a kind of national roll call in miniature. The obelisks, the fraternal Woodmen of the World markers, and the humble iron-ore stones together map how a single community honored its dead across generations and how American commemoration itself changed over time.
If you visit
As you walk in beneath the brick columns and metal archway, look down as much as up. The oldest graves here are marked with rough local iron-ore rock, dark and unlettered, and finding them among the later granite and limestone is like reading the cemetery from its beginning.
Watch for the tall obelisks and the distinctive tree-stump markers of the Woodmen of the World — a fraternal order whose members were once buried under carved stone logs — and let your eye trace the changing styles across the decades. Each shift in material and shape marks another chapter in the community's life.
This is a cemetery still in use and still cared for, with an annual memorial service and dinner that draw descendants back each year. If you visit, you are stepping into a living tradition, not a museum. Give the place a slow, unhurried walk, and it will hand you two centuries of one Cherokee County community, quietly and in order.
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
- · Josiah Thomas
- · Moses Langston
Themes & tags
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