HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Montgomery Cemetery

Bellville, Austin County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Montgomery Cemetery Established 1850 Historic Texas Cemetery - 2007

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Established in 1850, Montgomery Cemetery is among the oldest burial grounds of Austin County, dating to the first years of Texas statehood. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2007, it preserves the resting place of pioneer families who settled this stretch of the Brazos country. Graves from so early a date are a rare surviving record of antebellum frontier life.

Why it matters

Cemeteries from the dawn of Texas statehood preserve the earliest generation of Anglo and German settlers who laid the foundations of the state.

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Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryMemorial

Nearby & related markers

Concord Cemetery

Kenney, TX

In the farmland of northern Austin County, Concord Cemetery opened in 1870 as the burial ground of the Concord Christian Church, its earliest grave holding a Confederate veteran and early settler. Around it gathered the pioneer families—Collins, Creath, McNutt and others—who had reached Texas in the 1830s, one of them serving with the baggage guard at San Jacinto. Confederate, Civil War and World War I veterans lie beneath its varied stones, a record of a rural community across a century of life. After decades of neglect, descendants cleared the overgrown grounds in 2010.

Buckhorn Cemetery

Bellville, TX

Established in 1880, Buckhorn Cemetery is among the rural burial grounds of Austin County that trace the settlement of central Texas after the Civil War. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, it preserves the resting place of an early farming community. Such graveyards are often the last physical record of the families who first worked the surrounding land.

Cedar Creek Community

Chappell Hill, TX

Cedar Creek was a Methodist settlement that thrived between the mid-1830s and early 1850s, halfway between San Felipe de Austin and the town of Washington, and became a center of the Texas Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1849 its residents founded nearby Chappell Hill, which grew into the hub of Methodism in central Texas as the older community faded into it. By the end of the Civil War the site had reverted to farmland, and today only rocks around the community spring remain.