Reeves-McMillan Cemetery
Carthage, Panola County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in South Carolina in 1788, William McMillan, Sr., moved to Alabama where he was married in 1823 to Elizabeth Wren. The couple had four children: William, Jr. (b. 1824), Elizabeth (b. 1828), Matthew (b. 1829), and Marshall (b. 1835). The family settled in Texas in the late 1830s, obtaining a land patent from the Republic of Texas in 1846, shortly before the authority of the Republic was formally transferred to the new state of Texas. The area surrounding the family's new home was designated McMillan's Post in 1848 and William McMillan, Sr., was first postmaster. The postal station was discontinued in 1866, and William died that year. The McMillans set aside a place on this site for burials of family and friends and others in the community who had no access to other burial grounds. It is believed that William and Elizabeth McMillan and other family members were interred here in unmarked graves before the first headstone was placed for 24-year-old pioneer Sophrona A. Dobbs in 1868. A high infant-child mortality rate bears witness to the harsh conditions of pioneer life, as do the five known graves of victims of the 1919 influenza epidemic. For many years the cemetery has been maintained by families of those interred on the site; in the early 1950s a cemetery association was organized to care for the property. A descendant of the Reeves family, which is prominently represented in the cemetery, gave additional acreage in 1976 with the stipulation that the cemetery bear the Reeves name. With more than 234 marked and 80 unmarked graves, the Reeves-McMillan Cemetery is a chronicle of Panola County history. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in South Carolina in 1788, William McMillan Sr. moved to Alabama, married Elizabeth Wren, and brought his family to Texas in the late 1830s, receiving a Republic of Texas land patent in 1846 just as the Republic became a state. The settlement around his home was named McMillan's Post in 1848, with William as its first postmaster. The family set aside this ground for neighbors who had nowhere else to bury their dead; its infant graves and five victims of the 1919 influenza epidemic testify to hard frontier conditions. A Reeves descendant's 1976 gift added the family name to the more than 300 graves.
Why it matters
Spanning the Republic of Texas to the 1919 flu pandemic, this cemetery is a layered chronicle of Panola County's pioneers and the everyday hardships they endured.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William McMillan Sr.
- · Elizabeth Wren McMillan
- · Sophrona A. Dobbs
Related events
- · 1919 influenza epidemic
- · Annexation of Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Adams Cemetery
Logan, TX
After the Civil War, Lorenzo H. Adams (1849–1912) came from Arkansas to this corner of Panola County, serving over the years as constable, justice of the peace, and deputy sheriff. When his young daughter Georgia Anne died in 1884, Adams donated an acre around her grave as a public cemetery. Its stones—Baker, Goodwin, Kilburn, McNeese and others—record pioneer families and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.
Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church
Logan, TX
Chartered in 1880 with just eight members, this East Texas congregation was organized by Elders William H. Gresham and J. R. Alexander, with Gresham—a Confederate veteran—serving as its pastor until 1897. After years of meeting nearby, the members moved to this site in 1910, building a sanctuary whose second floor doubled as a Woodmen of the World lodge hall. For generations it has been a pillar of religious and community life in eastern Panola County.
International Boundary Marker
Carthage, TX
For more than a century, France, Spain, and later the United States disputed where their empires met in this borderland, a quarrel finally settled by the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. After Texas won independence, a joint U.S.-Texas commission led by John Forsyth and Memucan Hunt spent 1840–41 surveying and marking the line from the Gulf up the Sabine to the Red River. The granite marker preserved here is believed to be the only surviving original international boundary marker within the contiguous United States.
Deadwood Cemetery
Carthage, TX
The community of Deadwood took root in the 1830s with the Adam LaGrone family, and its burial ground began in 1847 when Adam's wife Christeena died; he was laid beside her nine years later. Though not formally recorded as a public cemetery until 1859, it was already serving the settlement, and descendants of those pioneer families maintain it yet.