Mt. View Cemetery
Coleman, Coleman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery was established in 1891 on land donated by G. William Baker at the base of Robinson’s Peak in rural Coleman County. Families in the area built a new school called Mount View School. Upon the death of local residents, a cemetery was created near the schoolhouse. The oldest marked grave is that of Martha C. Baker, who died in 1891. Many of the families buried here were early pioneers and represent the history of the area. There are currently 312 identified graves at Mt. View, with 132 individuals born before 1900. In 2005, a cemetery association was created. In 2006, a pavilion was built near the entry gate, the land was legally designated as a cemetery and additional acreage was acquired.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1891 on land donated at the base of Robinson's Peak, this rural Coleman County cemetery grew up alongside the Mount View School to serve the families who settled the area. The oldest marked grave dates to that first year, and more than a hundred of those buried here were born before 1900. A cemetery association formed in 2005 to protect and formally preserve the grounds.
Why it matters
Cemeteries like Mt. View preserve the names and life spans of the ordinary pioneer families whose labor turned open Texas rangeland into settled communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1891, the country around Robinson's Peak in rural Coleman County was passing from open range into settled community. This was the tail end of the Gilded Age, a time when families were moving into the more remote pockets of Texas hill and rangeland, staking out farms and drawing together into neighborhoods where before there had been only distance.
The pattern here was the classic one for such places. Families in the area built a school — Mount View School — and when death came, as it always did, they made a burial ground near the schoolhouse. The living and the dead were kept close, and the same small cluster of buildings and graves became the anchor of the whole locality.
It is worth remembering how young the United States' hold on this specific country still was. Within living memory it had been unsettled range; now, at the base of a named peak, there was a school with children in it and a cemetery beginning to fill. That compression — wilderness to community inside a generation — is the essential fact of frontier Texas.
People & events
The cemetery began in 1891 on land donated by G. William Baker, whose gift gave the growing community a permanent place to bury its dead. That same year brought the oldest marked grave the ground still holds: that of Martha C. Baker, who died in 1891. The marker does not spell out how she and the donor were connected, only that they shared a surname — so the burial ground opened, fittingly, with a name already tied to the land it stood on.
Around the graves gathered the ordinary families who had settled the area. Many of those buried here were among the region's early pioneers, and together they represent the history of the locality in the most literal way a place can — as the people who lived it. The numbers are quietly eloquent: of the 312 identified graves at Mt. View, 132 belong to individuals born before 1900, a whole population whose lives reached back into the nineteenth century.
The more recent chapters are about care rather than settlement. In 2005 a cemetery association was formed to look after the grounds. The following year, 2006, a pavilion was built near the entry gate, the land was legally designated as a cemetery, and additional acreage was acquired — the kind of unglamorous, devoted work that keeps a rural burial ground from slipping quietly out of memory.
Its place in the American story
Mt. View belongs to a great, unheralded category of American places: the rural cemeteries that preserve the names and lifespans of ordinary pioneer families. No famous battle was fought here and no celebrated figure is buried here, and that is precisely the point. It is the working people — the ones who turned open rangeland into farms and neighborhoods — whose record survives in ground like this.
The figure of 132 people born before 1900 is a small demographic archive in its own right. Each of those graves marks someone who lived through the transformation of this country from frontier to settled community, and together they let a visitor grasp, in one quiet acre, the human scale of westward settlement. Cemeteries do what few other local records can: they put a name and two dates on the people history usually leaves anonymous.
The association formed in 2005 reflects another broadly American story — the modern effort to protect and formally preserve the resting places of the pioneers. As the founding generations pass from living memory, descendants and neighbors have stepped in to secure deeds, raise shelters, and tend grounds that might otherwise vanish. In doing so they keep the community's oldest record legible for whoever comes next.
If you visit
This is a rural cemetery in the Coleman County countryside, set at the base of Robinson's Peak, and its appeal is its plainness and its setting rather than any grand monument. Approaching it, you get a feel for why families chose to root a school and a burial ground here together — close, practical, and within sight of the landmark that named the school.
Walk slowly and read the dates. With well over a hundred people here born before 1900, the older stones let you meet the region's pioneer generation directly; look for the earliest markers, including the 1891 grave that opened the ground. Near the entry gate you will find the pavilion, a sign of the care the cemetery association has put into the place in recent years.
It makes a peaceful, reflective stop on a drive through rural Coleman County — the sort of place that asks only for a little of your time and gives back a real sense of the ordinary lives that settled this land. Bring patience and curiosity rather than an itinerary, and let the names do the talking.
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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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Silver Valley Cemetery
Silver Valley, TX
The first known grave here belongs to Helen A. Averitt, an early spiritual leader and educator buried in 1881, two decades before the land was formally designated a cemetery. Originally called Robinson's Peak Cemetery, it holds early settlers, veterans of every branch of the U.S. military, and the families of Mexican railroad workers who came to the region in the early 20th century. An association formed in 1958 keeps the still-active grounds.
White Chapel Cemetery
Coleman, TX
After Coleman County was organized in 1867, pioneer families pushed past the county seat to settle this grassy, game-filled locality and founded the village of White Chapel. When land was deeded for a school in 1884, a cemetery took root on the same ground, and school, church, and burial place all shared the community's name. Consolidation eventually drew the schoolchildren away, but the cemetery still records the families who first broke this land.
Coleman County
Coleman, TX
Coleman County occupies land where Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa people once camped and kept lookouts from its hills. White settlement began in 1857 around Camp Colorado, a U.S. 2nd Cavalry post on Jim Ned Creek; the county was created in 1858 and named for Robert M. Coleman, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and San Jacinto veteran. In 1862 cattleman John Chisum arrived to raise beef for Confederate troops, and the county formally organized in 1864.
Colonel James E. McCord
Coleman, TX
James E. McCord came to Texas from South Carolina in 1853 and made his name surveying the raw frontier, including the ground around Camp Colorado. When the Civil War drained regular defenses, he took charge of the Texas Frontier Regiment, a hard-to-discipline band of frontiersmen, and in 1863 was unanimously elected its colonel. He scrapped the predictable patrol routes that raiders had learned to slip past, favoring surprise scouting expeditions, and his outfit was eventually absorbed into Confederate service as the 46th Texas Cavalry.