Sparks Settlement Cemetery
Port Arthur, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
John and Melinda Sparks and their family came to southeast Texas from Tennessee in 1838. They settled on the Jeremiah Mixon headright on Lake Sabine and later set aside land for a family burial ground. The land was acquired by the Port Arthur Land Company in 1896. Although Melinda and John Sparks, along with family members and neighbors, were buried in the cemetery, all that remains to mark the site is a monument erected in 1948 in memory of a ten-day-old child, Arthur Stilwell Smith, who was born and died in May 1896.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John and Melinda Sparks brought their family from Tennessee to the Lake Sabine country of southeast Texas in 1838, settling on the Jeremiah Mixon headright and setting aside land for a family burying ground. The Port Arthur Land Company acquired the tract in 1896, and today the only surviving marker is a 1948 monument to Arthur Stilwell Smith, an infant who lived just ten days in 1896. The site preserves the faint trace of an early pioneer family on land later swallowed by a boomtown.
Why it matters
It records the ordinary settlers whose graves and homesteads were absorbed by later development, a reminder of how quickly frontier settlement gave way to the industrial Gulf Coast.
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Related people
- · John Sparks
- · Melinda Sparks
Themes & tags
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