Pool's Cemetery
Montgomery, Montgomery County, Texas
Marker Inscription
AMONG 1850s SETTLERS HERE WERE JOHN W. POOL (1823-1901) AND HIS WIFE, JOANNAH (1825-1910). THEIR SON, WILLIAM J. POOL (1855-1936), DEEDED ABOUT TWO ACRES IN THE HEZEKIAH FARRIS SURVEY TO THE UNION GROVE BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES IN 1885. THE CHURCH ALSO HOUSED A SCHOOL, AND A CEMETERY BEGAN WITH THE BURIAL OF JOHN C. MONTGOMERY (1885-1888). IN THE 1950s, EUGENIA (POOL) AND FRANK GAZETTE CONVEYED ADDITIONAL LAND. MILITARY VETERANS INTERRED HERE INCLUDE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS HENRY E. WILLIAMS (1825-1900) AND JOHN RANDOLPH STOVALL (1812-1903). UNION GROVE BAPTIST CHURCH NOW HAS A LARGER SANCTUARY NEARBY. THE POOL’S CEMETERY ASSOCIATION COORDINATES AN ANNUAL WORK DAY AND MAINTAINS THIS HISTORIC GRAVEYARD AND THE TRADITIONS OF PAST GENERATIONS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Among the 1850s settlers here were John W. Pool and his wife Joannah, whose son William deeded about two acres in 1885 to the Union Grove Baptist and Methodist churches, which also housed a school. The cemetery began that same year with the burial of a young child, John C. Montgomery, and later gifts of land expanded the grounds. Among those interred are Confederate soldiers Henry E. Williams and John Randolph Stovall, and the Pool's Cemetery Association still maintains the historic graveyard today.
Why it matters
The graveyard preserves the intertwined life of frontier church, school, and burial ground, and the Civil War generation that helped settle Montgomery County.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John W. Pool
- · Henry E. Williams
- · John Randolph Stovall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ebenezer Cemetery
Huntsville, TX
Organized in 1854 on land donated by Jonathan and Sarah McGary along the stagecoach road linking Huntsville and Austin, Ebenezer Cemetery grew up beside a Baptist congregation founded under the auspices of the Southern Baptist Convention. Its earliest marked grave dates to 1855, and among those resting here are first families of the Republic of Texas era and veterans reaching back to the Civil War. Though the congregation later disbanded and reorganized elsewhere, a memorial association incorporated in 1986 still tends the ground.
Hughey Chapel Cemetery
Stoneham, TX
The family of Jefferson Edmond Hughey settled a 260-acre homestead in this part of Grimes County by 1859. They laid out a family cemetery whose earliest marked grave, that of Hughey's mother-in-law Mary Ann Garmany Boozer, dates to 1876, and built a nearby chapel that doubled as the community schoolhouse. The land stayed in Hughey hands until 1989, and the burial ground—home to Confederate veterans' graves—still marks the region's earliest settlers.
Amos Gates
Washington, TX
Amos Gates, born in 1799, was among the settlers of Stephen F. Austin's first colony, the "Old Three Hundred" generation that established Anglo-American settlement in Mexican Texas. This marker also remembers his son William C. Gates, born in 1834, who served in the Confederate army before his death in 1877. Together they span the colony's founding and the Civil War era at Washington, cradle of Texas independence.
Concord Cemetery
Kenney, TX
In the farmland of northern Austin County, Concord Cemetery opened in 1870 as the burial ground of the Concord Christian Church, its earliest grave holding a Confederate veteran and early settler. Around it gathered the pioneer families—Collins, Creath, McNutt and others—who had reached Texas in the 1830s, one of them serving with the baggage guard at San Jacinto. Confederate, Civil War and World War I veterans lie beneath its varied stones, a record of a rural community across a century of life. After decades of neglect, descendants cleared the overgrown grounds in 2010.