Nelson Cemetery
Springtown, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Hugh Nelson (1821-1884), a native of Tennessee, donated the original two acres of this burial ground. The earliest dated stone marks the grave of his infant son Hugh, who died in 1864. Earlier burials were marked only with field-stones. A number of children's graves date from a dysentery epidemic in 1884. Known at one time as Walnut Creek Cemetery, this is the burial place of many area pioneers, including members of the Cruse, Helm, Nix, Osburn, Parker, and Peden families. Nelson Cemetery contains over 700 known graves. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tennessee-born pioneer Hugh Nelson gave the first two acres of this Parker County burial ground, where the earliest dated stone marks his infant son, who died in 1864; still earlier graves were marked only with fieldstones. A cluster of children's graves recalls a deadly dysentery epidemic in 1884, the same year Nelson himself died. Once known as Walnut Creek Cemetery, the ground holds more than 700 graves of area pioneer families—Cruse, Helm, Nix, Osburn, Parker, and Peden among them.
Why it matters
Pioneer cemeteries like Nelson's are the quiet archives of frontier settlement, recording the families, hardships, and epidemics that shaped a community's earliest generations.
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Related people
- · Hugh Nelson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Walnut Creek Baptist Church
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Organized in 1867 under the Rev. J. C. Power, this Baptist congregation first met in a log cabin and, in the 1870s, in a larger cabin on Walnut Creek that served as both church and school in the community of Parker's Shop, now Reno. The congregation moved nearby and built a frame sanctuary in the late 1880s, expanding onto adjacent land in 1947. What began as a rural frontier church grew steadily alongside its community.
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