Polley Cemetery
Sutherland Springs, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Joseph Henry Polley (1795-1869) was born in Whitehall, New York to Jonathan and Rachel Hubbard Polley. He later moved to Missouri, where he was a friend of Moses Austin, with whom he traveled to Texas in 1820. The next year, he returned to Texas with Stephen F. Austin as one of the original "Old 300" colonists. Polley settled in the Brazoria District and wed Mary Augusta Bailey, daughter of pioneer Brit Bailey. The couple built a home that they named Whitehall. Polley served as sheriff and assisted retreating settlers during the Runaway Scrape, 1836; Mary helped mold candles for use by the first Texas Congress. Polley moved his family in 1847 to this area, then a part of Guadalupe County. The family established a cemetery as this site in 1848, when Emeline Elizabeth Polley James, one of the eleven Folley children, died while giving birth. Two years later, her daughter of the same name was interred next to her. The family completed the Whitehall home about 1850. Over the years, several family members, including Joseph Henry Polley, were laid to rest in the cemetery. Mary Bailey Polley (d. 1888), the family matriarch, was the last to be buried here. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Joseph Henry Polley came to Texas in 1820 with Moses Austin and returned in 1821 as one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old 300" colonists, settling in the Brazoria District and marrying Mary Bailey, daughter of the pioneer Brit Bailey. Polley served as sheriff and aided fleeing families during the Runaway Scrape of 1836 while Mary molded candles for the first Texas Congress. In 1847 the family moved to this area and built their home, Whitehall; the cemetery began the next year with the burial of a daughter who died in childbirth, and Mary, the matriarch, was the last laid to rest here in 1888.
Why it matters
The Polley graves link Wilson County directly to the founding generation of Anglo Texas—the Old 300 colonists and the flight and independence of 1836.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Polley graves reach all the way back to the very beginning of Anglo-American Texas. Joseph Henry Polley came west in the founding moment itself — first in 1820 with Moses Austin, then in 1821 as one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old 300," the first colony of American families the Austins were authorized to settle in what was then Mexican Texas. To stand at this cemetery is to stand near the roots of the whole enterprise.
The world Polley entered was thinly settled and hard. Colonists carved farms out of the Brazoria District, learned the land, and built the institutions of a new society from almost nothing. Within a generation that society would rise in revolution, and the Republic of Texas would be born in the turmoil of 1836.
By the time Polley moved his family to this area in 1847 — then part of Guadalupe County — he was an old settler in a country he had helped to found. The cemetery that began here the following year marks the passage of that first generation into the Texas soil they had claimed.
People & events
Joseph Henry Polley (1795–1869) was born in Whitehall, New York, and it was that hometown he would one day give to his Texas home. A friend of Moses Austin in Missouri, he made the journey to Texas and returned as one of the Old 300. In the Brazoria District he married Mary Augusta Bailey, daughter of the pioneer Brit Bailey, and the couple built a house they named Whitehall.
The revolution touched them directly. Polley served as sheriff and helped retreating settlers during the Runaway Scrape of 1836, the frantic flight of Texas families eastward ahead of the advancing army. Mary, for her part, molded candles for the use of the first Texas Congress — a small, vivid detail of how the whole community, women included, sustained the young Republic.
In 1847 the family came to this area and, about 1850, completed a new Whitehall home. The cemetery began in sorrow in 1848, when Emeline Elizabeth Polley James, one of the eleven Polley children, died in childbirth; two years later her infant daughter, who bore the same name, was laid beside her. Over the years the family gathered here — Joseph Henry among them — until Mary, the matriarch, was the last to be buried on this ground in 1888.
Its place in the American story
Few American places connect so directly to a founding moment. The Old 300 were to Texas roughly what the earliest colonists were to a new American state — the first authorized wave of settlement, the seed of everything that followed. A cemetery holding one of those colonists ties this quiet Wilson County spot straight to the origin of Anglo Texas.
The Runaway Scrape belongs to the larger American drama of independence and expansion. In the spring of 1836, as the fate of Texas hung in the balance, ordinary families fled their homes not knowing if they would return — a civilian side of revolution that rarely makes the textbooks but was lived by thousands. That Polley helped those retreating families, and that his wife made candles to light the new government's work, shows how a revolution is carried on the shoulders of its ordinary people.
And the naming of Whitehall after a town in New York is a distinctly American gesture: settlers carrying the names of the places they left to christen the places they made, stitching a new frontier to the older country behind them.
If you visit
This is hallowed, quiet ground, and the reward here is reflection rather than spectacle. The stones mark a single family's passage across the whole first chapter of Texas — from an Old 300 colonist to the matriarch who outlived him by nearly two decades, the last laid to rest here in 1888.
Read the dates and let them sink in. The cemetery opens with heartbreak: a daughter lost in childbirth in 1848, and her namesake infant beside her two years later. Family cemeteries like this one hold their history plainly, generation stacked beside generation, and few of them connect to so early a moment in the state's story.
Set in the countryside near Sutherland Springs, it makes a fitting, contemplative stop on a drive through the birthplaces of Anglo Texas. There are no facilities and nothing staged — just names, dates, and the founding generation of a republic, resting in the land they came so far to settle.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
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Attractions
- Green Acres Golf and Games14.8 mi away
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Related people
- · Joseph Henry Polley
- · Mary Bailey Polley
- · Stephen F. Austin
Related events
- · Runaway Scrape
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Whitehall
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Whitehall was the home of Joseph Polley, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colonists and the first sheriff of the Austin colony. After settling here with cattle herds said to be among the largest in Texas, he built this stone mansion between 1847 and 1851, framing it with Bandera cypress and importing cabinetwork by sea from New York. A social center of its day, it hosted Robert E. Lee, who wrote his last Texas letter from beneath its roof.
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