Near Gravesite of Veteran of American Revolution Mark Manning
Crabbs Prairie, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1750-1850) Served in American Revolution from Halifax District of North Carolina, his native state. Later lived in South Carolina and in Conecuh County, Ala., coming to Texas at 97 to live with sons who had large land grants and helped to settle Walker County. Some 20 or 30 veterans of the American Revolution followed the nation's westward movement to Texas, perpetuating here their devotion to freedom and liberty. Manning's sons fought in the Texas Revolution before he came to the new republic. Manning is buried in family cemetery (2 mi. NE). (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mark Manning was born in 1750 and served in the American Revolution from the Halifax District of his native North Carolina. Living to a remarkable old age, he came to Texas at the age of 97 to join sons who held large land grants and helped settle Walker County—sons who had themselves fought in the Texas Revolution. Manning was one of some twenty or thirty Revolutionary War veterans who followed the nation's westward movement all the way to Texas, and he is buried in a nearby family cemetery.
Why it matters
Manning's grave links the founding generation of the American Revolution to the settlement of Texas, a living thread of the nation's westward expansion carried by its oldest patriots.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Mark Manning
Related events
- · American Revolution
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Harmony Cemetery
Huntsville, TX
Harmony Cemetery is a quiet ledger of frontier Walker County, its earliest known grave dug for pioneer Vincent Herlock in 1851. Known in turn as Herlock and Goolsby cemetery, the ground later anchored the Harmony Missionary Baptist Church after it relocated here in 1906. Church and graveyard tell the familiar rural rhythm of settlement, worship, decline, and revival by a caretaking association.
Ebenezer Cemetery
Huntsville, TX
Organized in 1854 on land donated by Jonathan and Sarah McGary along the stagecoach road linking Huntsville and Austin, Ebenezer Cemetery grew up beside a Baptist congregation founded under the auspices of the Southern Baptist Convention. Its earliest marked grave dates to 1855, and among those resting here are first families of the Republic of Texas era and veterans reaching back to the Civil War. Though the congregation later disbanded and reorganized elsewhere, a memorial association incorporated in 1986 still tends the ground.
Buck Foster Cemetery
Bedias, TX
Buck Foster Cemetery took its name from William Harrison "Buck" Foster, who reserved an acre for burials when he sold his land in 1882 — though eroded sandstone markers show the ground served the Loma community even earlier. Among its hundreds of graves lies Nancy McCulloch Heath, of Choctaw and German descent, who came to Texas in 1845, alongside Civil War veterans and generations of her descendants. Its weathered stones, carved with Masonic, religious, and ranching symbols, form a folk record of southwestern Walker County.
Park Cemetery
Madisonville, TX
The story of Park Cemetery begins in 1852, when John and Elizabeth Park buried her brother Thomas Jefferson Kellett—a veteran of the Republic of Texas army—on their land. As more family members were laid to rest, the plot grew into a community cemetery, formally set aside in 1870 for burials and a school. More than 600 graves now include veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.