Ramah Cemetery
Tenaha, Shelby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Ramah community dates to the early 1870s, when William Tell Pou and his wife Mollie Lucy (Grace) Pou first homesteaded here. They helped found Ramah Baptist Church, established in 1874 and named for the biblical city of Ramah, meaning high place. The log church building also served as a schoolhouse, and became the center of a community with a store and cotton gin. This land was used for burials beginning in the 1870s. In 1891, the congregation built a new frame sanctuary, and in 1909, William and Mollie Pou officially deeded 3.6 acres to Ramah Baptist Church to be dedicated as Ramah Cemetery. The oldest marked burial, for Ella Holley, dates from 1878. More than 100 veterans are buried here, representing service in the U.S.-Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean Conflict. Also notable are gravestones for organizations including the Woodmen of the World, order of the Eastern Star and local Masonic lodges. Ramah Cemetery was later enlarged to more than six acres and has more than 1,000 marked burials. The oldest section contains tall marble monuments, obelisks, a brick crypt, and the granite curbed Parrish family plot. Mollie (d. 1917) and William (d. 1934) Pou are buried here, along with ten children and more than fifty descendants. Also buried here is George E.B. Peddy (1892-1951), who was a soldier, attorney and politician. In 1917, he was elected state representative while a student at the University of Texas at Austin, and he ran for U.S. Senate in 1922 and 1948. Peddy also served in both World Wars, receiving the Bronze Star and croix de guerre. Other notable burials include longtime superintendents, teachers, county officials and other community leaders. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Ramah community grew from the 1870s homestead of William Tell and Mollie Pou, who helped found Ramah Baptist Church in 1874 and gave its name — a biblical 'high place' — to the settlement's log church, school, store, and cotton gin. The cemetery formally deeded in 1909 holds more than a thousand graves, including over a hundred veterans spanning the U.S.-Mexican War through the Korean Conflict. Among them lies George E.B. Peddy, elected to the legislature while still a University of Texas student and a two-time U.S. Senate candidate decorated in both World Wars.
Why it matters
Ramah is a settlement's whole life story in one plot — church, school, and commerce — and its long roll of veterans reflects generations of Texans answering the nation's every call to arms.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Ramah Cemetery tells the life story of a settlement in the pine-and-cotton country of deep East Texas, in Shelby County near Tenaha. Its beginnings in the early 1870s place it squarely in the Reconstruction era, when families pushed into the region to homestead, clear land, and build the small institutions — church, school, store — that turned raw acreage into a community.
This was a world organized around cotton and faith. A log building that served as both church and schoolhouse was often the first public structure a frontier settlement raised, doing double duty for Sunday worship and weekday lessons. Add a store and a cotton gin, and you had the makings of a self-sustaining rural community, the kind that dotted the post-Civil War South.
Over the following decades — through the Gilded Age and into the Progressive and modern eras — such communities matured. Frame sanctuaries replaced log ones, cemeteries were formally deeded and enlarged, and the generations who had founded the place began to fill its burial ground. Ramah's story is that whole arc, compressed into a few acres of East Texas ground.
People & events
The settlement grew out of a single homestead. In the early 1870s William Tell Pou and his wife, Mollie Lucy (Grace) Pou, put down roots here and helped found Ramah Baptist Church in 1874, naming it for the biblical city of Ramah — a name meaning "high place." The log church that followed anchored everything else: it served as the schoolhouse, and around it gathered a store and a cotton gin.
Burials began on this land in the 1870s, with the oldest marked grave — for Ella Holley — dating to 1878. As the community grew, so did the church: a new frame sanctuary rose in 1891, and in 1909 the Pous formally deeded 3.6 acres to the church to be dedicated as Ramah Cemetery. The founders never left: Mollie (who died in 1917) and William (who died in 1934) are buried here, together with ten of their children and more than fifty descendants — a family that quite literally became the settlement.
Among the notable graves is that of George E.B. Peddy (1892–1951), whose life reads like a Texas saga. He was elected to the state legislature in 1917 while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, later ran for the U.S. Senate in both 1922 and 1948, served in both World Wars, and was decorated with the Bronze Star and the croix de guerre. Around him rest superintendents, teachers, county officials, and other community leaders — the people who kept the settlement running.
Its place in the American story
Ramah is a small place that captures a very large American pattern: how thousands of rural communities were born, sustained, and remembered across the post-Civil War frontier. The founding recipe — a homesteading family, a church that doubled as a school, a store and a gin — was repeated across the South and West, and a cemetery like this is where that whole life cycle is finally recorded in stone.
The burial ground's most striking feature is its military roll. More than a hundred veterans lie here, representing service from the U.S.-Mexican War through the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean Conflict. Read together, those markers trace nearly every major American conflict of a century — a reminder of how each generation of a single small community answered the nation's call.
The cemetery also preserves the fraternal culture of the age. Gravestones for the Woodmen of the World, the Order of the Eastern Star, and local Masonic lodges reflect the lodges and mutual-aid societies that, before modern insurance and social services, provided fellowship, ritual, and a measure of security to rural Americans. Ramah's designation as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2006 formally recognizes it as a place worth preserving.
If you visit
A historic cemetery rewards a quiet, unhurried visit, and Ramah is especially rich for those who like to read a landscape through its monuments. Head for the oldest section, where tall marble monuments, obelisks, a brick crypt, and the granite-curbed Parrish family plot show off the funerary craftsmanship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Look for the symbols carved into the stones — the emblems of the Woodmen of the World, the Eastern Star, and the Masonic lodges tell you about the social fabric of the community as much as any name or date. Seek out the veterans' markers, too, and let the span of conflicts they represent sink in; walking from one war to the next across the grounds is its own kind of history lesson.
Ramah pairs well with a broader drive through Shelby County's deep-woods history. As at any active burial ground, tread respectfully and keep to the lanes. You won't find crowds here — just the accumulated memory of a whole community, from its founding family to the leaders and soldiers who followed, gathered on the "high place" they named it for.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Tell Pou
- · Mollie Lucy Pou
- · George E.B. Peddy
Themes & tags
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