HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

New Mine Cemetery

Pittsburg, Camp County, Texas

Marker Inscription

George O. and Julia F. Hart deeded land to the New Mine Baptist Church on July 20, 1892, and ten years later sold additional land to the congregation. For many years, area residents used nearby cemeteries when loved ones passed away. These burial grounds included Reeves Chapel Cemetery, approximately one mile west; others were buried in Pittsburg cemeteries. In May 1930, the New Mine Baptist congregation began plans for establishing a burial ground of its own adjacent to the church site. That year, James M. Quillin died, and he was the first buried in New Mine Cemetery. In 1937, George Hart, who had died in 1929, was reinterred here at the request of his widow and children. The congregation installed the first fence in 1939, later replacing it and adding brick pillars at the arched entryway. The congregation has continued to use and maintain the historic burial ground. An annual memorial church service and business meeting, followed by dinner and fellowship under the pavilion, serves as a reunion for descendants of those buried here. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

George and Julia Hart deeded land to the New Mine Baptist Church in 1892, and for years the congregation buried its dead in neighboring graveyards before founding one of its own in 1930. The first grave was James Quillin's that year, and in 1937 George Hart himself was reinterred here at his family's request. The congregation has maintained the grounds ever since, gathering each year for a memorial service, business meeting, and dinner that doubles as a family reunion.

Why it matters

New Mine Cemetery shows how a rural Baptist congregation and its descendants sustain communal memory through the simple, enduring ritual of gathering at the graves.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · George O. Hart
  • · Julia F. Hart
  • · James M. Quillin

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionMemorial

Nearby & related markers

Shootout at the Pittsburg Depot

Pittsburg, TX

On February 10, 1885, a tangled domestic dispute among George "Dallas" Smart, his wife Annie, and U.S. Army Lt. John W. Heard boiled over into a public confrontation at the Pittsburg railroad depot. As Heard prepared to leave town, a struggle egged on by the gathered crowd ended with Heard shooting and killing Smart. A county judge ruled it self-defense the next day, and after later clearing himself in a court-martial and another trial, Heard went on to a distinguished military career. Annie remarried and died in New Mexico Territory in 1900.

Camp County Courthouse

Pittsburg, TX

The Texas Legislature created Camp County from part of Upshur County in 1874, and voters made Pittsburg the seat, raising a first courthouse in 1881. When the growing county outgrew that building, commissioners hired the Paris firm of Smith and Praeger to design a new Classical Revival courthouse, completed in December 1928 with its stepped parapet, arched windows, and Corinthian columns. It remains the center of county government.

Leesburg Cemetery

Leesburg, TX

The Leesburg Cemetery has served this small Camp County community since 1870, its graves quietly recording the lives of the families who settled and sustained East Texas in the decades after the Civil War. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery, the grounds mark the endurance of a rural settlement whose story is written in its headstones.

Ebenezer Cemetery

Pittsburg, TX

Ebenezer Cemetery marks a small farming community founded in the 1850s by families who came west from Georgia to the pine country of what became Camp County. Israel Rape deeded the land in 1857, though the oldest marked grave belongs to an infant who died in 1870, a reminder of how fragile life on the antebellum frontier could be. A cemetery association organized in 1971 still keeps the two-acre ground active today.