Starkey Cemetery
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground began as a family plot for the James Monroe and Martha Adeline (Rees) Starkey family. The first burial was for their son, Jones Starkey (d. 1868). J.M. Starkey, who came here in 1854, was Kerr County’s first assessor and collector, and later, chief justice; he was vital in Kerr County’s organization. The Gibbens, Lowrance and Rees families are the only others represented. Although few in number, the interred individuals’ contributions were invaluable; they served as civic leaders, mill builders and operators, ranchers, government officials, Texas Rangers, and Civil War veterans. Today, Starkey Cemetery remains a record of noted pioneers who made vital contributions to Kerr County. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2008
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Hill Country burial ground began as a family plot for James Monroe and Martha Adeline Starkey, whose son Jones was the first laid to rest here in 1868. J.M. Starkey, arriving in 1854, was Kerr County's first assessor-collector and later its chief justice, central to organizing the frontier county. Though only a handful of pioneer families rest here, they counted civic leaders, mill builders, ranchers, Texas Rangers, and Civil War veterans among them.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a compact record of the frontier families who built and governed Kerr County in its earliest years.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Texas Hill Country around what became Kerr County was, in the mid-1800s, a rugged frontier. Settlers arriving in the 1850s found beautiful, demanding land: limestone hills, clear rivers, and the constant work of building a society more or less from scratch. There were no established institutions waiting for them — the newcomers had to create the county governments, the mills, the ranches, and the civic order themselves.
This was the era of the early Republic's legacy giving way to statehood and, soon, the upheaval of the Civil War. Families who settled the Hill Country in these years lived through the organizing of new counties and then through the war that divided the nation, and their lives carried the marks of both. On the frontier, the line between public service and personal survival was thin; the same people who ranched and built mills also held the county offices and rode with the Texas Rangers.
A family burial ground from these years is, in effect, a founding document written in stone. It records who came, when they arrived, and what they built — the whole compressed history of a frontier county in a small, quiet plot of ground.
People & events
Starkey Cemetery began as a family plot for James Monroe Starkey and his wife, Martha Adeline (Rees) Starkey. The first burial was the hardest kind — their son Jones, who died in 1868. In an age when families buried their own on their own land, that first grave is what turned a piece of ground into a cemetery.
J.M. Starkey had come to the area in 1854 and quickly became central to the new county's life. He served as Kerr County's first assessor and collector and later as its chief justice, and he was vital to the county's very organization — one of those figures who does the unglamorous, essential work of turning a settlement into a functioning government.
Only a few other families rest here alongside the Starkeys: the Gibbens, Lowrance, and Rees families. Few in number, but their contributions were far larger than their count. Among those buried here were civic leaders, mill builders and operators, ranchers, government officials, Texas Rangers, and Civil War veterans — nearly every role required to build and defend a frontier county, gathered into one small burial ground.
Its place in the American story
Small frontier cemeteries like this one are among the most honest records America keeps of its westward expansion. The great national story of settlers pushing into new territory can feel abstract until you stand before the graves of the specific people who actually did it — and here they are, named and dated, the first generation of a Texas county.
The roster of the dead reads like a catalog of frontier nation-building: the assessor who first put the county's affairs in order, the mill builders who made it possible to turn grain into flour and timber into lumber, the ranchers who worked the land, the Texas Rangers who patrolled it, and the Civil War veterans who carried the national conflict into this remote corner. Every young American county depended on people wearing several of these hats at once.
That so much history rests in the hands of just a few families also tells a national truth about how the frontier was settled — not by crowds, but by small, determined groups whose individual choices shaped whole regions. Preserving such a place as a Historic Texas Cemetery is a way of insisting that the people who did the founding not be forgotten beneath the larger story.
If you visit
Come to Starkey Cemetery in the spirit of quiet respect, because that is what the place asks. This is a Hill Country burial ground, small and intimate, where the oldest graves date back to the county's founding years. Reading the family names — Starkey, Gibbens, Lowrance, Rees — is like reading the first page of Kerr County's history.
Look for the earliest stones, and remember that the first burial here, in 1868, was a child. Frontier cemeteries carry that kind of grief plainly, and standing among the markers gives you a truer sense of what settling this land cost than any statistic could.
The setting itself is part of the experience: the open Hill Country light, the limestone landscape, the sense of distance from the modern world. If your travels take you through the Kerrville area and you appreciate places where the frontier past feels close at hand, this is a fitting, reflective stop. Tread gently, leave things as you find them, and let the handful of families resting here tell you how a Texas county was born.
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 Monroe Starkey
- · Martha Adeline Starkey
Themes & tags
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