Parker Cemetery
Grapeland, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Alabama native Joseph A. (also Joe, Jo or Josephus) Parker settled in East Texas by 1847. In October of that year, he wed Nancy Ann Allen in Cherokee County. The Parkers were living in Houston County by 1850, and the 1860 census listed them as having six children. Residents of the Jones Schoolhouse Community, the family used this site as a cemetery for their friends and relatives. The earliest marked graves are for W.R. Norred (d.1864) and Herbert Foard (d. 1869). Nancy’s father, John Allen, and many of his descendants are also buried in the cemetery. Ben Parker, grandson of Joe and Nancy, and his wife, Nannie, officially deeded the land for use as a cemetery in September 1914. At that time, the burial ground became a community cemetery. In the 1960s, hired caretakers moved the red fieldstones that marked many of the gravesites. Oral tradition holds that Joseph Parker is buried in one of the many unmarked graves. Former slaves are also buried here. Today, a cemetery association maintains the burial ground. Cemetery features include large, vertical stone markers and wrought iron fencing. The cemetery preserves the ties between the Parker family and the community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Alabama native Joseph Parker settled in East Texas by the late 1840s and, with his wife Nancy, made this ground the resting place for family and neighbors of the Jones Schoolhouse community. Its earliest marked graves date to the 1860s, and formerly enslaved people are buried here alongside the settler families. Deeded as a community cemetery in 1914, it still bears the wrought-iron fencing and tall stone markers of an old country burial ground — though many red fieldstone markers were lost when caretakers cleared them in the 1960s.
Why it matters
The cemetery quietly records the intertwined lives of white settler families and the enslaved and freed African Americans who shaped antebellum and postwar East Texas.
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Related people
- · Joseph A. Parker
- · Nancy Ann Allen Parker
Themes & tags
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