Molsbee Chapel Cemetery
Nocona, Montague County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. Abraham Molsbee and his wife Susan Looney Molsbee brought their eight children to Texas from Tennessee in 1888. They purchased 965 acres of land for farming and stock raising. A minister in the Church of the Brethren denomination, Molsbee and Henry Brubaker established a church in Nocona in April 1889. Molsbee also was instrumental in the organization of a number of other congregations throughout northwest Texas. He did mission work in the communities of Williams Creek in Cooke County, Live Oak in Parker County, Lingleville in Erath County, Pampa in Gray County and Salt Creek in Montague County, as well as in the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). This cemetery, located adjacent to the Molsbee Chapel Church, began as a family graveyard when the Molsbees' 20-year-old son, Orville, died in 1888. Other marked 19th century graves are those of the Molsbees' son Robert, who died at age two in 1895 and a neighbor, Wilfred Beck, who died in 1898. Though the graveyard was used by the community at large, it legally was a private cemetery until 1942, when David C. Molsbee, who inherited the land including this site from his parents Abraham and Susan, deeded two acres for a community burial ground. A cemetery association was established in 1971. Many veterans of the Armed Forces are interred here, among them Confederate soldiers John P. Watson of the 43rd Georgia Regiment and Fulton B. Loe, Jr., of Company A28, Louisiana Infantry. Other veterans include participants in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam conflict. The burial ground continues to serve the area and is a chronicle of northwest Texas history. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Rev. Abraham Molsbee brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1888, he helped plant Church of the Brethren congregations across the northwest of the state and into Indian Territory. The graveyard beside his chapel began that same year with the burial of his 20-year-old son Orville, and over generations it grew from a family plot into a community burial ground formally deeded in 1942. Its rows chronicle frontier hardship and the service of veterans from the Confederacy through World War I, World War II, and Vietnam.
Why it matters
Rural church cemeteries like this one preserve the religious and family networks that knit together settlement on the northwest Texas frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The northwest Texas frontier of the late nineteenth century was still being settled when a Tennessee family arrived in 1888. This was country where faith, family, and farming were inseparable — where a preacher was often also a homesteader, and where a new church was as much a milestone of settlement as a plowed field or a dug well.
Into this landscape came a minister and his wife, bringing eight children and the resources to buy a substantial spread of land for farming and stock raising. They belonged to the Church of the Brethren, a denomination with deep roots in the German-American, Anabaptist, and pietist traditions — a plain-living, peace-minded faith whose ministers often carried the Gospel to the far edges of settlement.
That missionary spirit is the key to this place. For a family like this one, arriving on the frontier was not only about building a farm; it was about planting churches and knitting scattered settlers into congregations across a wide and thinly populated region.
People & events
Within a year of arriving, the minister and a fellow churchman established a congregation in the nearby town in April of 1889. But his work reached far beyond a single community. He was instrumental in organizing a number of other congregations throughout northwest Texas and carried mission work into communities scattered across several counties — and even into the Indian Territory that would later become Oklahoma. His was a ministry measured in miles as much as in members.
The cemetery beside his chapel, however, began not in triumph but in grief. In 1888 — the very year the family arrived — their twenty-year-old son died, and the ground became a family graveyard. Other early burials followed: a young son of the family who died at the age of two in 1895, and a neighbor who died in 1898. What started as a private plot gradually became a burial ground used by the whole community, though it remained legally a private cemetery for decades. Only in 1942 did the minister's heir, who had inherited the land, deed two acres for a community burial ground, and a cemetery association was formed some years later.
Among those laid to rest here are many who served in the armed forces. The marker names two Confederate soldiers — one who served in a Georgia regiment and another in a Louisiana infantry unit — alongside veterans of the First World War, the Second World War, and the Vietnam conflict. In a single quiet graveyard, generations of American military service lie side by side.
Its place in the American story
This chapel and its cemetery preserve something that shaped the entire American frontier: the way religious faith and family networks did the work of building community where no institutions yet existed. A single minister, ranging across counties and into Indian Territory, could seed congregations that became the social backbone of a whole region — a pattern of itinerant, church-planting ministry that helped settle much of the country.
The presence of the Church of the Brethren adds a distinctive thread to the national tapestry. As one of the historic peace churches, with roots in German pietism, the denomination represents a strand of American religious life devoted to plain living and conviction — one of the many faiths that immigrants and their descendants carried into the West.
And then there are the graves of the veterans. To find soldiers of the Confederacy resting near veterans of two world wars and Vietnam is to see the sweep of American conflict compressed into a few acres of Texas soil. A rural cemetery like this one becomes an unassuming national archive — a record of who came, what they believed, and how they served.
If you visit
This is a place to walk slowly and read carefully. The chapel and the burial ground stand together, just as they have for well over a century, and the layout still reflects its origins as a family plot that grew outward to embrace an entire community.
Look for the range of dates and service the marker describes. Moving among the stones, you can trace the frontier's earliest sorrows in the burials of the 1880s and 1890s and then find the graves of those who wore the uniform in conflicts spanning generations. Veterans' markers have a quiet eloquence; here, they connect one small Texas graveyard to battlefields across American history.
Set in the ranching and farming country of northwest Texas, near the corridor of open land that stretches toward the Red River and the Oklahoma line, Molsbee Chapel Cemetery is a stop for travelers who find meaning in the small and the sincere. It remains an active burial ground and a living chronicle — come with respect, and let the rows of names tell you how faith and family first took hold on this frontier.
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
- · Rev. Abraham Molsbee
- · Susan Looney Molsbee
- · Henry Brubaker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Head of Elm (Saint Jo)
Saint Jo, TX
Long before the town of Saint Jo was founded here in 1873, this spot at the head of Elm Creek was a landmark on the frontier crossed by government survey expeditions, a proposed federal railroad route, and the U.S. 2nd Cavalry under Albert Sidney Johnston marching to establish Texas frontier forts. A post office opened in 1860, and the site steadily grew from a waypoint into a permanent settlement.
Elmwood Cemetery
Bowie, TX
Settler James W. Stallings donated the first land for this cemetery in 1880, two years before the town of Bowie was platted nearby along the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. Willie B. Nelson, a settler's young son, was the first burial, and Stallings would soon lay several of his own family here. Over the decades the grounds grew, gained a native-stone wall built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, and became the resting place of veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Buffalo Springs
Buffalo Springs, TX
Known as early as 1849 and used by buffalo hunters, Buffalo Springs was briefly chosen in 1867 as the site of a permanent U.S. Army post, only to be abandoned within months for want of water and timber in favor of Fort Richardson. It then served as a stage stand and campground between that fort and Fort Sill. In July 1874 it was the scene of a fight between Indians and a company of Texas Rangers under Captain George W. Stevens.
Pleasant Valley Cemetery
Buffalo Springs vicinity, TX
The community of Pleasant Valley grew up in the years after the Civil War, its one-room schoolhouse doubling as a church for scattered Clay County settlers. This cemetery was established in 1883 on land donated by pioneer Jim Draer, near the school site, though its earliest burial dates to 1873. Among the graves are veterans of conflicts spanning the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Korea, tended today by a cemetery association.