Scott's Chapel Cemetery
Hillsboro, Hill County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery served the former community of Scott's Chapel, named for the Scott family, who came here in 1852. James Williams Scott, a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence, migrated from Alabama in 1831 with wife Martha "Patsey" Bruce and family before eventually settling this area. Their son Palestine Gilliad Scott donated land for a school and church, while another son, John Coleman Burris Scott, gave property for cemetery use in 1860. The earliest burial, for Fannie E. Griffin, dates to 1859. Another notable burial is of Samuel McFall, a survivor of the Black Bean Episode of the 1842-43 Mier Expedition. The burial ground contains obelisks, Woodmen of the World markers, false crypts and interior fencing. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground served the vanished community of Scott's Chapel, tied to the family of James Williams Scott, a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence who came to Texas in 1831. His sons gave land for a school, church, and, in 1860, this cemetery. Among those resting here is Samuel McFall, a survivor of the deadly Black Bean Episode of the 1842–43 Mier Expedition.
Why it matters
The graves gather together the founding generation of Anglo Texas—independence signers and Mier Expedition survivors—whose sacrifices and settlement shaped the young Republic and state.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This cemetery reaches back to the founding generation of Anglo Texas — the men and women who came in the 1830s, lived through the fight for independence, and then pushed on to settle the interior in the decades that followed. The Scott family's arrival in this area in 1852 places them squarely in that wave of settlement that filled central Texas in the years after the Republic became a state.
But the roots run deeper than the 1850s. James Williams Scott had migrated from Alabama in 1831, before Texas independence, with his wife Martha "Patsey" Bruce and their family — arriving while Texas was still Mexican territory, in the restless years when American settlers were streaming in and tensions with the Mexican government were rising toward revolution. Families like the Scotts lived through the whole arc: colonization, revolution, republic, and statehood.
The community of Scott's Chapel that grew up here was typical of nineteenth-century rural Texas — a settlement organized around a family, a church, a school, and a burial ground. Such communities have largely vanished from the map, but their cemeteries remain, quiet archives of who came, when, and what they had lived through.
People & events
The names on and around this marker carry an outsized share of early Texas history. James Williams Scott was a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence — one of the men who put his name to a formal call for Texas independence in the tense weeks of the 1836 revolution. He had come to Texas in 1831, well before that fight, and eventually settled this area with his family.
His sons planted the institutions of the community. Palestine Gilliad Scott donated land for a school and church, while another son, John Coleman Burris Scott, gave property for the cemetery in 1860. The earliest burial recorded here, that of Fannie E. Griffin, dates to 1859 — a reminder that a burial ground often begins with a single grave before it is ever formally set aside.
Then there is Samuel McFall, and his presence turns this quiet cemetery into a link to one of the grimmest episodes of the Republic era. McFall survived the Black Bean Episode of the 1842–43 Mier Expedition — the notorious moment when captured Texan prisoners were forced to draw beans from a jar, a white bean meaning life and a black bean meaning execution. That a survivor of that ordeal rests here connects the ground directly to the hard, violent frontier of the young Republic.
Its place in the American story
Scott's Chapel Cemetery gathers, in one small burial ground, the generation that made Texas — and through Texas, shaped a chapter of the American story. The Texas Revolution and the decade of the Republic that followed were a distinct and dramatic episode in the larger drama of westward expansion, and the people buried here lived it firsthand.
The Goliad Declaration of Independence, which James Williams Scott signed, was part of the surge toward separation from Mexico that produced an independent republic before Texas ultimately joined the United States in 1845. The Mier Expedition and its Black Bean Episode, which Samuel McFall survived, belong to the bitter aftermath — the unresolved border conflict between the Republic and Mexico that would help draw the United States into war later in the decade.
To stand among these graves is to stand among independence signers and expedition survivors, the ordinary and extraordinary settlers whose choices and sacrifices moved the frontier westward. Their story is local in its details and national in its consequences, feeding directly into the expansion that would define nineteenth-century America.
If you visit
This is a place for quiet attention. As a Historic Texas Cemetery, Scott's Chapel preserves the material culture of nineteenth-century mourning, and part of the pleasure of a visit is simply reading the stones. Look for the obelisks, the false crypts, and the interior fencing that once set family plots apart — and for the distinctive Woodmen of the World markers, tree-stump monuments left by a fraternal order that once provided its members' gravestones.
Walk gently and let the dates speak. The earliest burial reaches back to 1859, and the ground holds the founding family whose sons gave the land for church, school, and cemetery. Somewhere among these graves lies a survivor of the Black Bean Episode — a good moment to pause and consider what that man had lived through before he found rest here.
The community of Scott's Chapel is gone, so the cemetery is the settlement's last standing chapter. Treat it as such: an outdoor archive of early Texas, best visited slowly, with respect for the families who made this corner of Hill County their home and their final resting place.
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
- · James Williams Scott
- · Samuel McFall
Related events
- · Goliad Declaration of Independence
- · Mier Expedition
- · Black Bean Episode
Themes & tags
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