Old Plum Grove Cemetery
West Point, Fayette County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Old Plum Grove Cemetery began as a family burial ground. Texas pioneer John Y. Criswell buried his wife, Eleanor, on this site. The Criswell family was part of Stephen F. Austin’s Third Colony, which arrived in Texas by 1830. In 1839, the Plum Grove Baptist Church, which would become linked to the cemetery, formed. This was one of the earliest Baptist churches in the state of Texas. In 1851, John Click deeded land for the church and cemetery to the congregation. Church participation declined in the 1860s, and by the end of the decade, the congregation moved its place of worship. Soon, though, the nearby community of West Point started to grow and began using the burial ground. The earliest grave here dates to 1835. Other graves include those of military veterans involved in conflicts dating to the Texas Revolution. The cemetery had two sections – one where whites were interred and the other for African American burials. Today, as one cemetery, the site serves as a monument to the history of the surrounding communities. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This ground began as a family plot when Texas pioneer John Y. Criswell—part of Stephen F. Austin's Third Colony—buried his wife Eleanor here, with the oldest grave dating to 1835. In 1839 the Plum Grove Baptist Church, one of the earliest Baptist congregations in Texas, took shape nearby, and in 1851 John Click deeded land for church and cemetery alike. As the town of West Point grew, the burial ground served the wider community, with separate sections that reflected the segregation of the era.
Why it matters
The cemetery holds the earliest colonists of Austin's colony and Texas Revolution veterans, while its divided grounds bear witness to how racial segregation was carried even into the resting places of the dead.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Old Plum Grove Cemetery takes root in the earliest chapter of Anglo-American Texas, the era of Stephen F. Austin's colonies. In the years before the Texas Revolution, Austin brought settlers into the Mexican province of Texas under land grants, and these colonists spread out across the fertile country between the rivers, staking farms and founding the communities that would define the region for generations.
The oldest grave on this ground dates to 1835, on the very eve of revolution. This was a raw frontier where families lived far apart, where a family burial plot on your own land was often the only option, and where the institutions of settled life, churches, towns, and formal cemeteries, were only beginning to take shape.
The decades that followed traced the whole arc of early Texas: the fight for independence, the years of the Republic, statehood, and then the divisions of the Civil War era. Fayette County lived through all of it, and this small burial ground quietly absorbed the dead of each passing generation.
People & events
The ground began, as so many Texas cemeteries did, with a single grief. The pioneer John Y. Criswell buried his wife, Eleanor, here, and in doing so consecrated the first family plot. The Criswells had come to Texas as part of Stephen F. Austin's Third Colony, arriving by 1830, which places them among the true founding families of Anglo Texas.
Around this private burial ground, a religious community took shape. In 1839 the Plum Grove Baptist Church was formed, one of the earliest Baptist congregations in the entire state, and it became bound up with the cemetery's story. In 1851 John Click deeded land for the church and cemetery to the congregation, giving the burial ground a formal home. But congregations rise and fall: participation declined through the 1860s, and by the end of that decade the church moved its place of worship elsewhere.
The cemetery, though, endured, because the nearby community of West Point was growing and needed it. The town's people began using the grounds, and among those laid to rest here are veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Texas Revolution itself. The cemetery was also divided in the manner of its time, with one section for white burials and another for African American burials, a separation that has since been healed into a single cemetery serving the memory of all the surrounding communities.
Its place in the American story
This one small cemetery holds two of the largest themes in the American story. The first is westward expansion: the Criswells and their neighbors were part of the migration that carried families out of the older United States and onto new frontiers, in this case into Austin's colony in Texas. Their graves are the physical record of that movement, the endpoint of long journeys toward new land and new lives.
The second theme is harder and just as American. The cemetery was laid out with separate sections for white and African American burials, and that division tells the truth about the era plainly: the color line ran so deep that it followed people even into death. To stand here is to see segregation written into the ground itself, a reminder that the country's founding ideals and its lived realities were, for a very long time, painfully far apart.
That the site is one cemetery today, honoring all who rest in it, speaks to a different and more hopeful movement in American history, the long effort to acknowledge and repair those divisions. Together, the old boundaries and the present unity make this a place where the nation's contradictions and its capacity for change are both visible at once.
If you visit
Walk this ground slowly and let its age settle on you. The earliest grave dates to 1835, which means you are standing among the resting places of people who lived through the birth of Texas itself. Look for the oldest, most weathered stones; they mark the founding families of Austin's colony and veterans whose service reached back to the Texas Revolution.
As you move through the cemetery, be aware that it was once two sections, one for white burials and one for African American burials. That history is part of what this place teaches, and knowing it changes how you read the grounds. Today it is a single cemetery, and walking it as one whole is itself a small act of remembrance.
The setting is rural and quiet, the kind of Fayette County landscape where the country history of Texas feels close to the surface. It fits naturally into a day of exploring the small towns and back roads between Austin and the Colorado River country. Come without a rush, read the names of the founders and the forgotten alike, and let this modest burial ground stand, as it now does, as a monument to all the communities that grew up around it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Y. Criswell
- · John Click
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
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