Ozro Cemetery
Maypearl, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1858 J.P. Gilmore and Richard D. Graves gave land for Pleasant Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, south, and for this burial ground. The earliest marked graves date from 1870. J.H.L. Jackson donated additional land in 1895. At that time, the cemetery served Nation Town, a thriving community with several stores and a school. The village was renamed Ozro in 1898, when that post office opened. After the International & Great Northern Railroad reached this area in 1902, many residents moved to Maypearl, and Ozro declined. Today the cemetery is the only remnant of its past.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1858 J. P. Gilmore and Richard D. Graves donated land here for the Pleasant Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and its burial ground, with the earliest marked graves dating to 1870. The cemetery served Nation Town, a lively community of stores and a school later renamed Ozro when its post office opened in 1898. After the railroad reached the area in 1902, residents drifted to nearby Maypearl, and today the cemetery is all that remains.
Why it matters
Ozro is a classic Texas ghost town whose only survivor is its graveyard, a monument to communities the railroads made and unmade.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. P. Gilmore
- · Richard D. Graves
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jackson Cemetery
Maypearl, TX
Dr. Henry L. Jackson set out from North Carolina for Oregon in 1852 but, stopping in Texas to visit his wife's family, was drawn into frontier expeditions against raiders near Fort Gates before learning of her death. He resettled in Ellis County, remarried, and in 1856 took title to this land, where the family began a cemetery in 1864 with the burial of a young daughter. Jackson himself, who died in 1880, holds the last marked grave, and the property has stayed in the family for five generations.
Auburn Cemetery
Ellis County, TX
Pioneers began burying their dead at this Ellis County site as early as 1856, and in 1865 it became part of a tract that Confederate veteran Rezi Jarvis Banks deeded to the Methodist Church for a school and church. His wife Minerva lies among the earliest marked graves. In its heyday Auburn was a thriving farming community with four churches, stores, and a post office, but the lack of a high school and the railroad's bypass eventually emptied it, leaving the cemetery as its chief remaining link to the past.
Maypearl Cemetery
Maypearl, TX
Maypearl sprang up on the International & Great Northern line in 1903, and when landowner William P. Wilemon died in 1907 and was buried on his farm, townsfolk resolved to make a proper cemetery. His widow Minnie sold four acres, including his grave, to trustees for the purpose, and the grounds came to hold the doctors, teachers, farmers, and fraternal members who built the town. Tombstones mark veterans of wars from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Oak Branch Cemetery
Oak Branch, TX
In 1875 pioneer rancher William M. Claunch gave twenty acres for a Methodist church, campground, and burial ground, seeding the once-thriving community of Oak. The oldest grave belongs to a one-year-old girl who died in 1881, and the surrounding stones bear the names of the district's founding families. A cemetery association has cared for the grounds since 1927.