Mt. Pleasant Cemetery
Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
At the close of the Civil War, local African Americans, newly freed from slavery, formed the Mt. Pleasant Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. The Rev. M.F. Jamison served as the first pastor for the group, which was part of the East Texas Annual Conference. Members built a brush arbor and peace camp in this area and were led by the Rev. Frank Rabb, Major Sanders and Parson Choice in the early years. They formally organized as a congregation in 1871. As more settlers moved into the area over the next two decades, the need arose for a community cemetery. In April 1891, trustees for the church purchased two acres at this site, adjacent to the sanctuary, from J.C. and S.S. Barnett. The earliest marked grave in the burial ground is that of a seven-year-old boy who died in July 1890. There are also several unmarked graves, believed to date to the early 1870s. Today, Mt. Pleasant Cemetery continues to be linked to the church, although it has moved. A church committee maintains the burial ground, the final resting place for generations of area pioneers and families, including military veterans, Freemasons and community leaders. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As the Civil War ended and slavery collapsed, newly freed African Americans in this corner of East Texas gathered under a brush arbor to worship, forming a Methodist Episcopal congregation that formally organized in 1871. As families put down roots, the church bought two acres in 1891 for a burial ground beside its sanctuary, with graves that trace back even earlier. Generations of pioneers, veterans, Freemasons and community leaders now rest here, still tended by a committee tied to the church that founded it.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the story of a freedpeople's community that built its own faith, institutions and permanence in the uncertain first decades after emancipation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The end of the Civil War remade East Texas overnight. With the Confederacy's collapse in 1865, the enslaved people of this region were suddenly and finally free, standing at the threshold of a new life with almost nothing but that freedom itself. The years that followed — Reconstruction and the decades after — were a time of both extraordinary hope and deep uncertainty, as freedpeople set about building lives, families, and institutions that were truly their own.
Among the very first things freedpeople across the South built were their own churches. Under slavery, worship had often been supervised and constrained; in freedom, an independent congregation was one of the first acts of self-determination a community could claim. A church was a place to pray, but it was also a school, a meeting hall, a source of leadership, and an anchor of identity — the beating heart of a new community.
Here in this corner of East Texas, that founding impulse took a beautifully simple form. Newly freed African Americans gathered to worship in the open air, under a brush arbor — a shelter of branches and boughs — and at a peace camp on this very ground. From those humble, rooted-in-the-earth beginnings, a lasting community would grow.
People & events
The congregation that formed here became the Mt. Pleasant Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, part of the East Texas Annual Conference. Its first pastor was the Rev. M.F. Jamison, and in the earliest years the group was led by figures whose names the marker preserves: the Rev. Frank Rabb, Major Sanders, and Parson Choice. These were the founders and shepherds of a community teaching itself how to be free, and their leadership carried the congregation from a brush arbor to a formal organization in 1871.
As more settlers arrived over the next two decades, the community faced the universal need of any people putting down permanent roots: a place to bury its dead. In April 1891 the church's trustees purchased two acres at this site, adjacent to the sanctuary, from J.C. and S.S. Barnett. That land became Mt. Pleasant Cemetery — a deliberate act of permanence by people whose right to own and hold ground had, within living memory, been denied entirely.
The graves themselves tell the community's story in miniature. The earliest marked burial is that of a seven-year-old boy who died in July 1890, a reminder of how often these early communities buried their children. Several unmarked graves are believed to date back even further, to the early 1870s. Over the generations the cemetery became the resting place of area pioneers and families — among them military veterans, Freemasons, and community leaders — the full civic life of a people who had built everything themselves.
Its place in the American story
Mt. Pleasant Cemetery is a physical record of one of the most important and least-told chapters of American history: the creation, by formerly enslaved people, of their own enduring institutions in the first decades after emancipation. Across the South, freedpeople founded churches, established schools, formed fraternal orders like the Freemasons, and consecrated their own burial grounds. Each of those acts was a claim to full citizenship and dignity, made in a time when both were fiercely contested.
A cemetery is a particularly powerful kind of claim, because it declares permanence. To buy land, bury your dead, and tend their graves across generations is to say: we are from here, we belong here, and we will not be erased. The presence of veterans and community leaders among the graves shows a people who served, led, and built, insisting on their place in the American story even when that story tried to leave them out.
That this ground is officially recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery matters, too. So many African American burial grounds have been neglected, lost, or paved over; the survival and care of this one keeps a whole community's history readable. It stands as testimony not only to those buried here but to the broader, nationwide achievement of freedpeople who turned emancipation into lasting community.
If you visit
A historic cemetery asks for a quieter kind of attention than a monument or a museum, and this one rewards it. Walk slowly and read the stones. The dates and names carry the shape of a whole community — the pioneers and family lines, the veterans, the members of fraternal orders — and among them, the marked grave of a child from 1890 that anchors the burial ground's beginning.
Remember as you go that not every grave is marked. Some of the oldest resting places here, believed to date to the early 1870s, hold no stone at all, and that quiet unmarked ground is part of the history too. Tread respectfully; this is a place still cared for by a church committee, an active link between the living congregation and those who came before.
If you're traveling through East Texas with an eye for the region's deeper past, let this be a stop that slows you down. Standing where a freed community once worshipped under a brush arbor — and where its descendants still tend the graves — connects you directly to the courage and hope of the years just after emancipation, in a way few places can.
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
- · Rev. M.F. Jamison
- · Rev. Frank Rabb
Themes & tags
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