Sabine Pass Cemetery
Sabine Pass, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The oldest continually used cemetery in Jefferson County, This graveyard has served the citizens of the Sabine Pass area since the 1840s. The earliest documented grave is that of a 12-year-old John A. Dashiell, son of William V.C. and Mary Dashiell, who died on August 27, 1847. The large site now known as Sabine Pass Cemetery represents a combination of five formerly distinct burial grounds. Included in what was once called "The Colored Peoples Cemetery" is the unmarked grave of 108-year-old Louis Williams. Born a slave in Mississippi in 1813, Williams died on June 23, 1921. Among the burials in this historic graveyard are those of many distinguished military veterans. Able Coffin (1792-1862) and Burwell Jackson (1783-1864) fought in the War of 1812. Jacob Harmon Garner (1814-1887), Benjamin Johnson (1815-1872) and Niles F. Smith (1800-1858) were Texas Revolution veterans. Soldiers and sailors from both the Union and Confederate forces of the Civil War also are interred here. The two Union sailors Patrick Ferlin and Albert W. Marshall, died of wounds sustained during the offshore naval encounter on January 21, 1863, while serving on the ship Morning Light. A number of Confederate veterans rest in the cemetery, as does Kate Dorman, dubbed "the heroine of Sabine Pass" for her assistance of the southern troops. A number of graves have been specially marked with military or state historical markers. Maintained by Jefferson County and cared for by local volunteer organizations, the Sabine Pass Cemetery remains in use by citizens of the area. Its historic gravestones and monuments provide a unique component of the cultural history of Jefferson County. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest continually used cemetery in Jefferson County has served the Sabine Pass area since the 1840s, its earliest documented grave dating to 1847. Now a union of five once-separate burial grounds, it holds veterans of the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution, and both sides of the Civil War—including Union sailors killed in the 1863 naval fight off the pass and Kate Dorman, the "heroine of Sabine Pass." A former "Colored Peoples Cemetery" section includes the unmarked grave of Louis Williams, born enslaved in 1813 and buried at age 108.
Why it matters
In a single ground, the cemetery layers more than a century of Texas conflict and community—frontier settlement, three wars, slavery, and emancipation—into one enduring cultural record.
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Related people
- · Kate Dorman
- · Louis Williams
- · John A. Dashiell
Related events
- · Battle of Sabine Pass
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Benjamin Johnson
Sabine Pass, TX
Benjamin Johnson, born in Louisiana in 1815, settled in Texas in 1832 and took up arms in the fight for independence. He fought in the Texas army's capture of Bexar in December 1835 and served in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. He lived out his days as a respected farmer and stockman in the Sabine Pass area.
Jacob Harmon Garner
Sabine Pass, TX
A Louisiana native, Jacob H. Garner settled as a boy in southeast Texas in 1825, a decade before the fight for independence. In 1835 he joined the Texas Army and took part in the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar, service for which he later received land grants, then went on to hold a string of local offices from justice of the peace to district clerk. When war came again in 1861, he took up arms once more as a Confederate officer, a life of service spanning Texas's earliest struggles through the Civil War.
Niles F. Smith
Sabine Pass, TX
A New Yorker who came to Texas with Robertson's colony in 1834, Niles F. Smith fought in the Texas Revolution and then helped build the young Republic, serving as its first banking commissioner along with posts as customs collector and land agent. Settling at Sabine Pass in 1841, he erected Jefferson County's first steam sawmill and its first church, and backed annexation to the United States in 1845. He rests here beside his wife Abigail and their two sons.
Fort Sabine
Sabine Pass, TX
When war came in 1861, the citizens of Sabine City formed a Committee of Safety and, with enslaved and free labor, raised a dirt-and-timber earthwork to guard the strategic Sabine Pass channel into East Texas and western Louisiana. In September 1862 a Union steamer and two schooners battered the fort; with only about sixty defenders and yellow fever spreading, Confederate Major Josephus S. Irvine spiked the guns and abandoned it. Lessons from its fall shaped nearby Fort Griffin, site of the famous 1863 Confederate victory at Sabine Pass.