Pecan Wells Cemetery
Hamilton, Hamilton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A pioneer community named Lookout began to develop in this area traversed by the Lampasas River and nearby Lookout Mountain during the 1870s and 1880s. Lookout School opened about one mile southeast of here in the late 1870s. This cemetery began with the burial of Barnard and Maria Schmith Pfluger's infant son Heinrich K. Pfluger in 1893. In 1904 Civil War veteran and early area settler W. M. Kemp and his wife Margaret donated land here for cemetery purposes. According to local traditional the Kemps conveyed the land under the condition that grave sites continue to be available at no cost. In the early 1900s Merrill Creek School was established about two miles west of this site. Lookout and Merrill schools closed in 1921 and a new school by the name of Pecan Wells was opened about one half mile west of the cemetery. At that time the community and cemetery were renamed Pecan Wells. Pecan Wells School closed in 1944 when it merged with the nearby Pottsville School System. Maintained by an association of descendants of people buried here, the cemetery contains more than 200 graves including those of veterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the 1870s and 1880s, pioneer families settled the country along the Lampasas River near Lookout Mountain, opening a school and, in 1893, beginning burials at what became Pecan Wells Cemetery. Civil War veteran W. M. Kemp and his wife Margaret formally donated the ground in 1904, reportedly on the condition that graves always remain free. As nearby schools consolidated in 1921, the community took the name Pecan Wells, and its cemetery grew to hold more than 200 graves.
Why it matters
A rural cemetery like this quietly records the whole arc of a frontier community—its schools, its families, and the veterans of every war from the Civil War to Vietnam who came home to be buried among neighbors.
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Related people
- · W. M. Kemp
- · Margaret Kemp
- · Heinrich K. Pfluger
Themes & tags
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