Red Oak Cemetery
Red Oak, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally known as the Kemble Cemetery, this graveyard began as a family burial ground. Abraham Kemble acquired the land on which the cemetery is located about 1860. He and his wife Mary were both buried here in 1867. In 1892 Kemble descendants gave the land to Liberty Baptist Church, later renamed First Baptist Church, Red Oak. The cemetery became a public burial ground after the turn of the century. Those interred here include generations of Kemble family members, area pioneers, and veterans of several wars, beginning with the civil war.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Begun as the Kemble family burial ground on land Abraham Kemble acquired around 1860, this cemetery took in Abraham and his wife Mary in 1867. Kemble descendants deeded the plot to a local Baptist church in 1892, and after the turn of the century it became a public burial ground holding area pioneers and veterans of several wars.
Why it matters
Rural cemeteries like this one preserve the layered memory of a community—its founding families, its pioneers, and the generations who served in the nation's wars.
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Related people
- · Abraham Kemble
- · Mary Kemble
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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The Ovilla community grew from Peters Colony families who settled here in 1844, and in 1886 Benjamin and Erixna McFarlin deeded four acres to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a burial ground. The earliest marked grave, from 1884, belongs to Rebecca Summers McElroy, and more than 440 people now rest here, among them early settlers and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam. The cemetery reads as a roll call of the community's founders.
Shiloh Cemetery
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