Smithwick Cemetery
Marble Falls vicinity, Burnet County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The history of this community cemetery dates to 1854 when 18-year-old Rebecca Chambers died and was buried here. Rebecca, who reportedly was ill while traveling past here with the family of her sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and E. G. Evans, asked to be buried on this flower-covered hillside. While the land was vacant public domain several other burials took place. There are about 65 early graves marked only by rocks. The cemetery site became part of the 160-acre survey of A. J. Stanford and was patented in 1857. The burial grounds were used by early settlers of Hickory Creek, Elm Grove, and Smithwick's Mill. The Smithwick Cemetery Association was formed in 1930. Additional land was added to the site over the years, a caretaker was hired, and improvements were made to the site, including a tabernacle and fencing. The association continues to maintain the site. Among the 600 burials here are 5 unknown graves reinterred from the South San Gabriel River area in 1974 by the U. S. Corps of Engineers, and veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. (1997) Incise on back: Researched by: Doris M. Henry
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Smithwick Cemetery began with a single wish: in 1854, eighteen-year-old Rebecca Chambers, gravely ill while traveling through, asked to be buried on this flowered hillside. Over the following decades the site grew into the shared burial ground of the Hickory Creek, Elm Grove, and Smithwick's Mill communities, its roughly 65 earliest graves marked only by stones. Today some 600 burials rest here, including veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Korea.
Why it matters
A community cemetery like this is a layered record of frontier settlement, its rows of graves tracing generations of ordinary Texans and the wars they answered.
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Related people
- · Rebecca Chambers
Themes & tags
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