Old Cemetery of Paris
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The old city cemetery is located on land once owned by George Washington Wright (1809-1877), founder of the city of Paris. The oldest grave here is said to be that of a free black man who worked for Wright. Although the stone is illegible, the date is thought to be 1845. The oldest legible stone marks the grave of Thomas Wortham (1776-1846). Site of the primary burial ground for Paris between 1845-1865, the plot was also referred to as Wright's Cemetery. In 1866 the Evergreen Cemetery was begun, called the New Cemetery, and many graves were exhumed and moved there. George W. Wright was buried in the Old Cemetery in 1877. A cemetery association was formed in 1879, and in 1885 Wright heirs deeded the land to its trustees. In 1922 the cemetery was deeded to the city of Paris and a standpipe was located there for the new Lake Crook Waterworks. The cemetery contains approximately 325 graves. About one hundred markers are intact, and show the majority of burials to have taken place between 1870-1910. Many early community leaders are buried here, and a granite marker honors members of the 9th Texas Infantry, C. S. A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On land once owned by George Washington Wright, founder of Paris, this was the town's primary burial ground from 1845 to 1865, its oldest grave said to be that of a free Black man who worked for Wright. When the newer Evergreen Cemetery opened in 1866, many graves were moved, yet Wright himself was buried here in 1877, and a granite marker honors soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry, C.S.A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Of roughly 325 graves, about a hundred stones survive, most from 1870 to 1910.
Why it matters
The founder's cemetery holds a town's origins in a single plot—its first citizens, its Civil War dead, and, in its oldest grave, a reminder of the free and enslaved people whose labor built it.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Paris sits in the rolling country of far northeastern Texas, near the Red River frontier that separated Texas from Indian Territory. The town took shape in the years of the early Republic and grew through the turbulent middle of the nineteenth century, a period that carried it from frontier settlement into the shadow of the Civil War. A community's first cemetery is often its most honest record of those years.
This ground served as the primary burial place for Paris from 1845 to 1865, exactly the span in which a raw settlement hardened into a town with leaders, institutions, and a claim on permanence. To walk it is to read the town's opening chapter written in stone.
The land itself belonged first to the man who founded Paris, and the cemetery grew on his property. That overlap of a founder's land and a town's first dead gives the place a rare closeness to its own origins.
People & events
The land here was once owned by George Washington Wright, who lived from 1809 to 1877 and is remembered as the founder of Paris. For years the plot was known simply as Wright's Cemetery. Its oldest grave is said to be that of a free Black man who worked for Wright; the stone is illegible now, but the date is thought to be 1845. That uncertain marker sits at the very beginning of the town's recorded memory.
The oldest legible stone belongs to Thomas Wortham, who was born in 1776 and died in 1846, a life that reached back to the founding era of the nation itself. Around such early graves the town buried its first generation of leaders. A granite marker here honors members of the 9th Texas Infantry, C.S.A., who died not in battle but in a measles epidemic in 1862, a sober reminder that disease killed as surely as combat during the Civil War.
The cemetery's later history is a story of a growing town outrunning its first burial ground. In 1866 a newer cemetery, Evergreen, opened, and many graves were moved there. Yet Wright himself was buried in this older ground in 1877. A cemetery association formed in 1879, Wright's heirs deeded the land to its trustees in 1885, and in 1922 it passed to the city of Paris.
Its place in the American story
Founders' cemeteries are among the most concentrated historical documents a town possesses. In this single plot lie a town's namesake founder, its earliest citizens, its Civil War dead, and, in that oldest uncertain grave, a reminder of the free and enslaved people whose labor helped build the place. Few sites hold so much of a community's beginning in so small a space.
The honest hedging around that oldest grave matters. Its stone is illegible and its date only estimated, and saying so plainly is truer to history than filling the silence with invented detail. Across the country, the earliest markers of the people who did the hardest work are often the first to fade, and this one stands as a quiet acknowledgment of that loss.
The measles memorial to Confederate soldiers speaks to a national truth of the 1860s: epidemics moving through crowded camps claimed enormous numbers of young men far from any battlefield. A local granite stone thus opens onto one of the great, under-told realities of the Civil War.
If you visit
Come expecting a fragment rather than a full record. Of roughly 325 graves, only about a hundred stones remain intact, and most of those date from 1870 to 1910. Because many earlier graves were moved to the newer cemetery, the ground you walk holds both presence and absence, and part of its power is in what is no longer legible.
Look for the granite marker honoring the soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry who died in the 1862 measles epidemic, and pause at the older stones that mark the town's first leaders. The oldest graves reward a moment of quiet respect precisely because their names have worn away.
Set on the founder's own former land, this old cemetery pairs naturally with a slower walk through Paris itself. Treat it as the opening page of the town's story, and let the weathered stones remind you that a community's history often survives in incomplete and humbling form.
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
- · George Washington Wright
- · Thomas Wortham
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Shady Grove Cemetery
Paris, TX
This shaded grove near a creek crossing began as a resting place in 1844 for a dying young traveler who asked to be buried in the beautiful spot, and it soon became ground for camp meetings led by traveling frontier preachers. A local family deeded the land in the 1840s, and a Methodist church grew directly from those open-air revivals. An adjoining African American burial ground, its earliest marked grave from 1875, tells of the Black community that lived and worshiped alongside.
Leroy Nelson DeWitt, Pioneer Citizen
Mount Joy, TX
Born in Virginia in 1840, Leroy Nelson DeWitt came to this corner of North Texas with his parents in 1854 and put down deep roots as a merchant and farmer. He married Mary Collier in 1861 and, the next year, joined the Confederacy to serve on the frontier through the end of the Civil War. Afterward he became a recognized leader in the area's civic, church, and business affairs until his death in 1918.
The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp
Petty, TX
Before the Civil War, a lone grove of persimmons stood as the only trees on a hundred-square-mile Texas prairie, a natural gathering spot where settlers swapped news and livestock. When secession came in 1861, Methodist lay minister and Mexican War veteran James Hill organized a cavalry company here and drilled his men beside the grove. When militia law barred the unit from leaving Texas, they reorganized as Company E of the 9th Texas Infantry and went on to fight at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga.
Thomas Wilson Stegall
Lake Creek, TX
Thomas Wilson Stegall was born in North Carolina in 1832, served as a Confederate private late in the Civil War, and moved his large family through Tennessee and Mississippi before settling in Delta County, Texas, in 1873. A Baptist preacher remembered for his kindness—he once cut a gap in his prized rose hedge just to give a neighbor a shortcut—he built a blacksmith shop that became the gathering place at the heart of the new town of Lake Creek. From that community nucleus a town grew.