Owen Cemetery
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
David Allen Owen came to Texas with his first wife, Mary (Langsdon), who died enroute, and their 5 children. They traveled with family members and others from Randolph County, Alabama to Henderson County, Texas in 1851. Owen served as chief justice (county judge) from 1860 to 1869 and was a pioneer member of the Pilgrim's Rest Primitive Baptist Church at Baxter. He later settled in the Mill Run community and set aside part of his land for this cemetery. The earliest marked grave is for Owen's son, Silas Monk Owen, who died in 1873. Friends and neighbors, as well as other Owen family members, are buried here. Tombstones dated before 1900 bear the names of Clayton, Davis, Hanks, Hester, Moon, Ratcliff, Regester, and Rogers. David Allen Owen (1817-1885); his second wife, Lucinda (Woodard) (1834-1925); sons Jefferson Davis (1861-1916), David Randolph (1864-1927), Jordan Wade (1869-1947), Joseph Collins (1875-1930), and Dewitt Judson (1872-1943); and Mary Matilda (Clayton) Pace (1849-1930), a daughter by his first wife, also are buried here. Although many of the graves are unmarked or are marked only with rocks, the Owen Cemetery stands as part of the recorded history of this area of Henderson County.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
David Allen Owen came to Henderson County in 1851 from Alabama, having lost his first wife on the journey, and rose to serve as the county's chief justice from 1860 to 1869. A pioneer Primitive Baptist, he settled in the Mill Run community and set aside part of his land as this cemetery, first used for his son's burial in 1873. The graves of Owen, his family, and neighbors — many marked only with rocks — make the site a record of the area's early settlers.
Why it matters
Owen Cemetery is a tangible archive of pioneer family migration into East Texas and the community leaders who organized its early public life.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David Allen Owen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lightfoot-Miller Cemetery
Athens, TX
On a hill above the water, this family cemetery holds generations of Henderson County pioneers who arrived in the 1850s and 1860s to endure the hardships of early Texas life. Among them lie James Wilburn Miller, a Tennessee-born Civil War veteran, and his grandson Isadore, killed in action in World War I. Iron-ore rocks are said to mark several Indian graves, and the long-neglected burial ground was recently restored.
Davis Cemetery
Larue, TX
Named for the pioneering Davis family, who reached Henderson County before the Civil War, this graveyard has served its rural corner since the mid-1800s on land deeded by J.J. Deupree in 1883. It is closely tied to the Baxter community, which became a station on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad by 1901 and soon had stores, churches, cotton gins, and a school. Among those buried here are a county sheriff, a county chief justice reinterred from an earlier grave, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War.
Henderson County
Athens, TX
Henderson County was created in 1846, the year Texas joined the Union, and organized within months from lands taken out of Houston and Nacogdoches counties. It honors James Pinckney Henderson, the state's first governor. The county seat shifted among Buffalo, Centerville, and finally Athens, which has held the seat since 1850.
Athens Lodge No. 165 A.F. & A.M.
Athens, TX
Chartered in 1854, Athens Lodge No. 165 was the first Masonic lodge in Henderson County, founded just a few years after the town of Athens itself. Its members first met above a store on the public square and grew from eleven master masons to more than fifty within two years, obtaining a formal charter in 1856. Over generations the lodge helped seed new lodges in surrounding communities and drew its members from the county's leaders in business, law, education, and public service.