Oakhill Cemetery
Hemphill, Sabine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
From the 1830s to late 1800s, pioneers settled along roads in this area, establishing dispersed agrarian communities, including Oakhill. Oakhill Baptist Church and this cemetery met the needs of individuals in these settlements. The church was originally located at Caney, but moved here by 1882; the graveyard was also established by the 1880s. While subsistence farming was the main occupation of most working individuals in the area, many supplemented their income through cutting and hauling timber to the Sabine River. By around 1910, lumber companies acquired vast amounts of timbered land in East Texas. However, by the 1930s, the lumber companies, with no reforestation programs in place, had cut most of the timber, and it became difficult for families to survive on subsistence farming, leading to the decline of area communities. This burial ground was once part of Sabine National Forest, which was established in 1935. Exceptions were made for acreage in special uses, such as burial grounds, but Oakhill Church and cemetery land was not exempted. The error was corrected in 1966, when the U.S. Forest Service conveyed property to the church and cemetery. The oldest marked grave in Oakhill Cemetery is that of Joseph Adair Smith, Sr. (d. 1882), whose grave was moved from Fairdale Cemetery. A number of other individuals were reinterred here in the 1960s, when water was impounded during the creation of the Toledo Bend Reservoir. The oldest known original interment occurred in 1885 for Philip Stine Edgar, though it is believed earlier burials exist. In 1965, the Oakhill Cemetery Association formed to care for the burial ground. Today, Oakhill Cemetery serves as a testament to the area’s pioneering settlers and early communities.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From the 1830s onward, pioneers spread across this Sabine County country in small farming settlements like Oakhill, where a Baptist church and its cemetery took root by the 1880s. Families scratched a living from subsistence farming supplemented by hauling timber to the Sabine River, until lumber companies stripped the forests by the 1930s and the communities faded. The graveyard was mistakenly folded into Sabine National Forest in 1935 — an error not corrected until 1966 — and later received reinterments displaced by the flooding for Toledo Bend Reservoir.
Why it matters
Oakhill traces the full cycle of an East Texas timber frontier: settlement, boom, deforestation, and decline, with even the dead relocated to make way for a modern reservoir.
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Related events
- · Creation of Toledo Bend Reservoir
Themes & tags
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