Mt. Antioch Cemetery
Mount Calm, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1854, Ezekiel J. Billington came to this area of Texas from Kentucky with his wife, Kitty Ann, and their three children. Billington organized a Baptist church the following year and named it Mt. Antioch. The six charter members of the Mt. Antioch Baptist Church were Ezekiel and Kitty Ann Billington, Nancy Billington, Houghton Hughes, Medina Hughes, and M. J. Billington. The nearby spring was a favorite camping spot for travelers in the area. As early as 1846, this site was used for the burial of those who died while passing through, and the graves of these persons remain unmarked. The first marked grave in what became the Mt. Antioch Cemetery was that of George Kimmel (d. 1860), the infant son of early settler James Kimmel. Between 1860 and 1875 the community that developed around the Mt. Antioch Baptist Church and cemetery grew and prospered. About 1874, however, members of the church began moving to the town of Mt. Calm (2 mi. N), where they organized a new congregation. The cemetery continues to be used and maintained by the local residents and descendants of the early settlers. A good example of a pioneer graveyard, Mt. Antioch Cemetery stands as a reminder of the early heritage of this part of Limestone County. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A spring here was a favorite camping stop for travelers crossing this stretch of Limestone County, and by 1846 it was already being used to bury those who died passing through. After Ezekiel and Kitty Ann Billington arrived from Kentucky in 1854 and organized the Mt. Antioch Baptist Church, a small community grew around church and graveyard. The congregation later drifted north to Mt. Calm, but descendants have kept the pioneer cemetery in use ever since.
Why it matters
Pioneer graveyards like this one preserve the names — and the anonymous unmarked graves — of the ordinary settlers whose lives built rural Texas.
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Related people
- · Ezekiel J. Billington
- · Kitty Ann Billington
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mount Calm Cemetery
Mount Calm, TX
Settlers reached this corner of Limestone County in the 1850s, and the Mount Calm community soon gathered around a Masonic lodge, stores, a post office, school, and churches. Pioneer James Samuel Kimmel gave the land for this cemetery, where the first marked grave dates to 1870. When the railroad bypassed the village in 1881, residents packed up and moved north to found New Mount Calm along the tracks, leaving the cemetery as the settlement's only lasting remnant.
Billington Cemetery
Prairie Hill, TX
Tennessee native E. J. Billington settled here with his family in 1854 and in 1890 sold a half-acre for a church and cemetery, with John Sanders the first recorded burial that year. The nearby town named for him once bustled with a school, post office, and several stores. Additional land was added in 1900, and the cemetery — with more than a hundred marked graves — still serves the area even as the community around it has faded.
Col. Leonard Williams
Mt. Calm, TX
Leonard Williams lived the turbulent frontier of Republic-era Texas, where relations with the Comanche shaped daily survival. Once a Comanche captive himself, he later served as a diplomat and Indian agent, earning a colonel's rank from his friend President Sam Houston. He settled near here in 1845 and built the area's first stock tank, scraping it out with a rawhide sled.
Prairie Hill Baptist Church
Prairie Hill, TX
On October 18, 1885, twelve members leaving the Mount Antioch Baptist Church organized a new congregation at Prairie Hill, aided by minister Ezekiel Jackson Billington, who had helped establish churches across the county. Land for a building and cemetery came from his daughter and son-in-law, and the first sanctuary was finished in 1890. The founding members were cotton and corn farmers, and their first pastor, George L. Jennings, was a Confederate veteran who had preached in Mississippi before moving to Texas.