Old Oakland Cemetery
Roans Prairie, Grimes County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1867 in connection with the Oakland Baptist Church, which stood here until moved to Roans Prairie in 1913. Graves of many pioneers are located here. Oakland was once a popular way-station for the Bates and Black Stagecoach Lines, which ran from Austin to Huntsville until 1880. This road, known as Coushatta Trace, was originally a trail of the Coushatta Indians, a friendly tribe that hunted in this territory. In 1838, a Mrs. Taylor, the last known person killed by Indians in Grimes County, was murdered not far from this site.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1867 alongside the Oakland Baptist Church, this Grimes County burial ground holds the graves of many of the area's earliest settlers. Oakland sat on the Coushatta Trace—an old trail of the friendly Coushatta people that became a stage road linking Austin and Huntsville—and served as a popular way-station for the Bates and Black stage lines until 1880. The marker layers Native, pioneer, and stagecoach-era history into a single quiet crossroads.
Why it matters
Rural way-stations like Oakland were the connective tissue of frontier Texas, where Native trails, settler cemeteries, and stagecoach routes all converged before the railroads redrew the map.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Bates and Black Stagecoach Lines
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Bedias
Bedias, TX
Long before Anglo settlers arrived, the Bidai people—an agricultural nation regarded as the region's oldest inhabitants—gave their name to the Bedias creeks and, eventually, the town. The first white settlement here rose in 1835 under Thomas P. Plaster, and in 1903 the coming of an International & Great Northern Railroad branch pulled the population toward a 'New' Bedias, though residents fought to keep the old name rather than honor a railroad official. The area is also famous for its 'Bediasite' tektites, glassy stones the Indians called 'jewels of the moon,' and as the one-time home of Sarah Dodson, credited with sewing the first Lone Star flag.
La Bahia Trail
Navasota, TX
Long before wagon wheels cut its ruts, this was a Native footpath threading southern Texas and Louisiana. In 1690 Alonso de León and the Franciscan Father Massanet marched a small army of men, horses, and pack-flour along it to found the Mission of San Francisco de los Tejas near the Neches—naming the church, and eventually the state, for the 'friendly' Tejas people. By the 1800s the same corridor had become the Opelousas Road, driving Texas cattle to distant markets.
Fanthorp Inn
Anderson, TX
Henry Fanthorp built this structure in 1834 as a home for his bride, Rachel Kennard, then enlarged it into an inn as travelers multiplied. It housed the region's first mercantile store and, from 1835, its first post office, standing at the crossroads where stage lines from Houston and between Nacogdoches and Austin met. Here Kenneth Lewis Anderson, vice-president of the Republic of Texas, died in July 1845.
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.