Robert Lee Cemetery
Robert Lee, Coke County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established in 1891, two years after the founding of the city of Robert Lee. Developers L.B. Harris and Eugene Cartledge, as president and secretary of the Austin and Northern Land and Cattle Company, on Sept. 29, 1891, sold for $1.00 this 11.7 - acre burial ground. Already site of several graves, it was deeded to Hayrick Lodge No. 696, A.F. & A.M., for "sole use as cemetery grounds for the members, relatives, and friends". Later it was named by the lodge. Buried here are 34 Civil War veterans, as well as soldiers of later wars and members of many of the families in Robert Lee. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1891, two years after the town of Robert Lee was founded, this West Texas cemetery was sold for a token dollar by a land and cattle company to the local Masonic lodge for use as a burial ground. Already holding a few graves, it became the resting place of the community's founding families. Among them lie 34 Civil War veterans, along with soldiers of later American wars.
Why it matters
The cemetery captures how Confederate and Union veterans carried the memory of the Civil War westward into the cattle country of late-19th-century Texas, shaping the new towns they helped settle.
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Related people
- · L. B. Harris
- · Eugene Cartledge
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Henry Davis Pearce
Robert Lee, TX
Illinois-born Henry Davis Pearce came to Texas in 1856 and joined the Confederate army at New Orleans in 1861, seeing hard service at the Siege of Vicksburg and the Battle of Mansfield and being captured at Pleasant Hill before serving to war's end. He later wrote a history of Confederate veterans, raised a large family, and helped organize Runnels County before moving to Robert Lee in 1906.
Cary Allen Gates
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Cary Allen Gates was born in Kentucky in 1836, came to Collin County, Texas, in 1858, and enlisted in the Confederate army at McKinney in 1861. He saw hard service — the Battle of Chickamauga, an injury at Murfreesboro, and a wound through the wrist at Spanish Fort, Alabama — before returning to civilian life, raising a large family, and settling in Coke County in 1906, where he lived until 1927. His long life bridged the frontier settlement of Texas and the early twentieth century.
Richard Coke
Robert Lee, TX
Richard Coke (1829-1896) was a Virginia-born Texan who backed secession, served as a Confederate captain in the Trans-Mississippi campaigns, and later sat briefly on the state supreme court before Reconstruction authorities removed him. His 1873 defeat of Governor E. J. Davis, and Davis's grudging departure, is often marked as the political end of Reconstruction in Texas. Coke went on to serve nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate; this memorial was erected by the state in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.
James Franklin Byrd
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Born in Kentucky in 1844, James Franklin Byrd came west and enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at Gonzales in 1862, riding through hard-fought engagements at Holly Springs, Harrisburg, and Fort Pillow. Captured and held as a prisoner of war on Mississippi's Ship Island, he talked his way free by volunteering to load a boat and slipping in among prisoners bound for exchange. He came home to Texas, married, and settled for good near Hayrick Mountain in the Coke County ranch country.