Olive Branch Cemetery
Chico, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first burial at this site occurred in the early 1870s. Area settlers H. H. Bradford, B. P. Cox, J. C. Cartwright, and J. C. Weaver, donated the property for the interment of a young girl who had died on a wagon train. The earliest marked grave is that of Maria B. Smith (1805-1875). During the 1890s, a sanctuary was built north of the burial ground for a Methodist Episcopal Church. As declining soil conditions caused families to move from the area, the congregation became inactive. The chapel was removed by 1914, but the Olive Branch Cemetery remains in use.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The first grave here was dug in the early 1870s when local settlers donated the land to bury a young girl who had died on a passing wagon train. A Methodist Episcopal congregation later built a sanctuary nearby, but as thin soils drove families away, the church went silent and its chapel was removed by 1914, leaving the cemetery as the community's enduring memorial.
Why it matters
Rural burial grounds like this preserve the names and hardships of pioneer families whose fragile settlements often faded from the map entirely.
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Related people
- · Maria B. Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Robert Calvin Mount
Chico, TX
Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.
R. C. Mount House
Chico, TX
R. C. Mount — a surveyor, part-time Methodist preacher, and Wise County's first tax assessor-collector — began this sturdy stone house in 1872 for his large family. He and his sons hauled the rock by wagon from neighboring Palo Pinto County, finishing the original two-story section in 1874, with later enlargements in 1890 and 1920. The property has remained in the Mount family ever since.
The Methodist Church in Chico
Chico, TX
This Methodist congregation was founded in May 1872, when pioneer Robert Calvin Mount, his wife, and three others gathered to worship in a log schoolhouse under the Reverend S.S. Cobb. Mount donated the land for its first church site. Over its first hundred years the congregation grew through five successive buildings on five different sites.
Siddons-Barnes Log Cabin
Chico, TX
Believed to have been raised in the early 1870s, this small oak-log cabin served area Methodists as their first place of worship and doubled as a schoolhouse on the Wise County frontier. Dr. J. A. Siddons and his wife bought it in 1883 and built rooms around it, and the Barnes family took it over in 1918. Stripped back to its original half-notched logs and moved to this site in 1987, the 256-square-foot cabin survives as a relic of pioneer beginnings.