Pitts Cemetery

🏛️The era

John Drayton Pitts's life spans one of the most dramatic stretches in American history, from the early years of the young republic to the eve of the Civil War. Born in 1798, he grew up as the United States expanded westward and the cotton economy of the Deep South boomed. His family moved to Georgia during the War of 1812, part of a wave of settlement into lands then being opened to white farmers and planters.

By the 1840s Texas was the great magnet for Southern families looking for fresh land. It was an independent republic until it joined the United States in 1845. Settlers came from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and the Carolinas, often traveling in large kin groups, bringing their customs, their churches and, all too often, the system of slavery that underpinned the Southern economy.

The San Marcos area, at the edge of the Texas Hill Country, was being settled in earnest around 1850. The road between San Antonio and Austin carried stagecoaches, freight wagons and travelers, and families laid claim to land along its route. By the time Pitts died in 1861, Texas was being swept into secession and the Civil War, a conflict that would upend the world these settlers had built.

👥People & events

Few Texas pioneers can claim a more unusual birthplace than John Drayton Pitts: he was born at sea on August 26, 1798, while his parents, John and Jane Pitts, were sailing from England to Charleston, South Carolina. The family later settled in Georgia. In 1819 young John married Eliza Permelia Daves, beginning a partnership that would last more than three decades.

Pitts entered public life and was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 1841. Soon afterward he moved to Grimes County, Texas, and convinced his relatives back home to follow. In 1843 eleven Pitts families made the long trek west, a striking example of how whole clans moved together. Once Texas joined the Union, Pitts served as the state's adjutant general under Governor George Wood from 1848 to 1849.

In 1850 he bought land here from his friend General Edward Burleson, one of the towering figures of early Texas: a veteran of the Texas Revolution, a former vice president of the Republic, and a founder of San Marcos. Over time much of the extended Pitts family settled along the nearby San Antonio-San Marcos stage route, in a community known as Stringtown, a name that suggests homesteads strung out along the road.

The cemetery began with grief. In 1850 the first burial was John Malone, the infant son of James L. and Eliza (Pitts) Malone and grandson of John and Eliza Pitts. The elder Eliza was buried here in 1851. In 1861 John D. Pitts died on his way home from the secession convention in Austin and was laid to rest beside his family. In 1875 his sons-in-law, James Malone and Samuel Kone Sr., formally set the cemetery aside, and Pitts descendants are still buried here today.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Pitts Cemetery captures how the American South moved west. Settlement was rarely a matter of lone pioneers. More often it was extended families, like the eleven Pitts households, who uprooted together and rebuilt their networks of kinship on new ground. Those networks shaped the culture, politics and economy of Texas for generations.

Pitts's own career traces the arc of Texas's transformation from frontier republic to American state. His service as adjutant general came in the first years after annexation, when the new state was organizing its defenses on a vast and contested frontier. His friendship with Edward Burleson connected him to the founding generation of Texas.

His death on the way home from the secession convention places this quiet cemetery at the threshold of the Civil War. The convention voted to take Texas out of the Union, a decision bound up with the defense of slavery that would lead to war, defeat and Reconstruction. Family cemeteries like this one, still used by descendants, link that turbulent era directly to the present.

🧭If you visit

The Pitts Cemetery sits near San Marcos, where the Hill Country begins to rise from the Blackland Prairie. As you visit, imagine the old stage road that once carried coaches between San Antonio and the towns to the north, with the Pitts family homesteads strung along it. Look for the oldest stones, and remember that the first grave here belonged to an infant, a reminder of how fragile frontier life could be.

This is an active family cemetery, still used by descendants, so please treat it with care. Stay on paths, don't disturb grave markers or offerings, and respect any posted access rules or private property. Quiet visits are best, and early morning or late afternoon light is ideal for reading weathered inscriptions.

San Marcos makes a fine base for exploring the region, with its spring-fed river and its long history. Pair a visit to the cemetery with Austin and San Antonio, the two cities the old stage road connected, for a road trip that follows the routes early Texans traveled, from the frontier republic to the brink of the Civil War.