Mulberry Cemetery
Ravenna, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located approximately two miles south of the Red River, Mulberry was established in the early 1880s as a small farming community. One of the first settlers in Mulberry was Civil War Captain Thomas Lightfoot and his family from Alabama, who bought several thousand acres of land along the Red River. In 1883, Thomas Lightfoot donated land to the Mulberry Community to be used for a cemetery and a one-room school. Eventually, Mulberry School closed and half of its property was sold by D.B. Deupree in 1951 to the cemetery. Joe C. Denton paid paid for the land as a gift to the community. The oldest part of the cemetery is located on the north end overlooking Mulberry Bottom. The first recorded burial on the property was that of two-year-old Allis May, in 1876. Other family burials date as far back as 1881. In the northwest corner of the original burial ground is the Mexican section shaded with trees. The first Mexican family to come to Mulberry was Ferman and Rossaria Portillo and their three children in 1902. Over the years the community experienced multiple natural disasters which took several lives. Some of these events include: The 1905 flooding of Mulberry Bottom, 1919 Mulberry Cyclone and the 1959 tornado which destroyed many of the tombstones and cemetery fence. There are several war veterans buried in the cemetery including the only known Civil War veteran, B.F. Moseley. All veterans are honored by the main gate entrance flag pole, which is set in a concrete stand embedded with the Veterans of Foreign Wars emblem. A cross and monument stand on the midpoint between the original burial ground and the site of the old Mulberry School in memory of those lost and unmarked graves. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Two miles from the Red River, the farming community of Mulberry took root in the early 1880s, its land anchored by Civil War veteran Captain Thomas Lightfoot, who donated ground for both a cemetery and a one-room school in 1883. The burial ground grew to hold pioneer families, a shaded "Mexican section" begun after the Portillo family arrived in 1902, and the victims of the floods, cyclones, and tornadoes that repeatedly struck Mulberry Bottom. A cross now stands over the unmarked graves between the old cemetery and the vanished schoolhouse.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a layered record of how a small Southern farming settlement was built, diversified, and battered by nature, preserving the names of families who might otherwise be forgotten.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1880s, the country two miles south of the Red River in far North Texas was still being settled farm by farm. This was the tail end of America's great westward expansion, when families from the older Southern states loaded up and moved on to claim new ground on the frontier's edge. The community that took root here was called Mulberry, a small farming settlement named for the low, fertile land of Mulberry Bottom.
The Red River country was rich but hard. Bottomland that grew good crops could also flood, and the open prairie left settlements exposed to the violent weather of the Southern Plains. A community here built its churches, schools, and burial grounds knowing that nature would test all of them.
It was also, from early on, more mixed than the frontier stereotype allows. The Reconstruction and Gilded Age decades that followed the Civil War brought not only Anglo settlers from the Deep South but, in time, immigrant families seeking work and a foothold — and a small rural cemetery would come to hold all of them together.
People & events
Among the first settlers was Civil War Captain Thomas Lightfoot, who came with his family from Alabama and bought several thousand acres along the Red River. In 1883 he made the gift that anchored the community's shared life: he donated land to be used for a cemetery and a one-room school. In a young settlement, those two institutions — a place to learn and a place to bury the dead — were the very heart of belonging.
The burial ground actually reached back even further than the donation. Its oldest recorded grave belongs to two-year-old Allis May, laid to rest in 1876, with other family burials dating to 1881; the oldest section sits on the north end, overlooking Mulberry Bottom. In the northwest corner, shaded by trees, is the Mexican section, begun after Ferman and Rossaria Portillo and their three children — the first Mexican family in Mulberry — arrived in 1902.
The community's history is written in disasters as much as in settlement. The flooding of Mulberry Bottom in 1905, the Mulberry Cyclone of 1919, and a 1959 tornado that shattered tombstones and tore out the cemetery fence each took their toll. Veterans rest here too, among them B. F. Moseley, the only known Civil War veteran buried in the ground. The school eventually closed, half its land sold in 1951 and folded into the cemetery — paid for by Joe C. Denton as a gift to the community — and today a cross and monument stand at the midpoint between the old burial ground and the vanished schoolhouse, honoring those lost and the unmarked graves.
Its place in the American story
A country cemetery like this one is a remarkably complete record of how ordinary American communities were made. The same donated acres held a school and a graveyard, because education and remembrance were the twin foundations a frontier settlement laid down first. Trace those graves and you trace the whole life of a place — its founders, its children, its soldiers, its newcomers.
The shaded Mexican section tells an especially American part of the story. A settlement that began with Southern families expanding westward became, within a generation, a community that also drew immigrant families seeking work and belonging — and the cemetery gathered them all into the same ground. It is a small, honest monument to how diverse the rural frontier actually was.
And the repeated marks of flood, cyclone, and tornado speak to the raw exposure of life on the Southern Plains, where communities endured natural violence again and again and kept rebuilding. The cross over the unmarked graves is the universal promise a burial ground makes: that the forgotten will still be remembered.
If you visit
Walk to the north end first, the oldest part, where the ground overlooks Mulberry Bottom and the earliest families were laid to rest. Reading the weathered dates in a place like this is the closest thing to hearing the community introduce itself — and here some of them reach back into the 1870s and 1880s.
Then find the tree-shaded northwest corner, the Mexican section, and let it remind you that this was never a single-story settlement. Notice, too, how many stones are gone or unmarked — the 1959 tornado destroyed many tombstones and the fence, and the cross and monument at the midpoint stand deliberately for those whose markers didn't survive and whose names may be lost.
This is a quiet, reflective stop rather than a bustling attraction, and that's the point. Set against the wide North Texas sky near the Red River, it fits a slow, back-roads kind of road trip — the kind where you pull over at a small country cemetery and let the names of a vanished farming community stay with you down the highway.
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
- · Thomas Lightfoot
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
William W. Bell Cemetery
Savoy, TX
English-born William W. Bell emigrated to America in 1820 and reached Texas by 1836, enlisting in the Republic of Texas army in 1837 and later riding with the Texas Rangers and carrying the Republic's mail. When he died in 1845, his family buried him here, beginning a graveyard that holds his wife Elizabeth, several of their children, and—by family tradition—some enslaved people in unmarked graves. Bell descendants formed an association in 1985 to preserve the site.
Virginia Point Methodist
Savoy, TX
Organized in 1837 at Old Warren, this Methodist congregation is counted as the oldest church in Fannin County, dating to the earliest years of the Republic of Texas. The present building was erected in 1860 and later recognized as a Texas Historic Landmark. Its base records that it was raised by Dr. and Mrs. Homer Jones.
Carson Cemetery
Ector, TX
Local tradition holds that this Fannin County cemetery took its name from John Carson, who once owned the neighboring land, and that its earliest graves date to an 1842 Indian raid on the nearby home of Dr. W. M. Hunter. The three victims were Minerva Hunter, her young daughter Elizabeth, and an enslaved or hired African American woman whose name has been lost to record. Cemetery trustees secured title by 1878 and later added land, and Minerva Hunter's grave was finally marked in 1942, a century after her death.
Oak Ridge Cemetery
Denison, TX
Asa Messenger, Sr. and his nephew William Lightfoot bought land in Grayson County in 1853, and by 1871 the Messenger family had settled for good in the area that became Oak Ridge. In 1881 Emma Messenger gave land for a school, and in 1882 for a community cemetery after her mother-in-law's death. Now holding more than 700 graves—including descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans reaching back to the Civil War—the cemetery has been tended by a dedicated association since 1951.