Stewart Cemetery
Commerce, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
John and Ellen Stewart and their children settled in this area about 1843. According to oral history, John Stewart is credited with building the first pioneer home in eastern Hunt County. Other settlers such as Godfrey Smith, William Rippy and their families began to arrive in 1845. John and his neighbors were county appraisers, county clerks and justices of the peace. John Stewart died about 1856. Ellen Stewart and their children remained in Hunt County. They sold 640 acres of land to William Jernigan, credited as founding father of nearby Cowhill (present Commerce). Though earlier graves are believed to exist in Stewart Cemetery, the earliest legible marker is that of three-year-old Elif Cummins, who was buried here in 1863. Two of John and Ellen Stewart's sons, R. E. and John F. Stewart, as well as other neighbors joined the Confederate Army in 1861. R. E. Stewart, aged 29, was killed in battle near Little Rock, Arkansas; he was interred there, but his brother and other Confederate veterans were buried on this site. Farmers and cattlemen began moving into the area in large numbers around the turn of the 20th century.Several of the newcomers dug the graves of the earlier settlers as they passed away. Many young children died and were buried here during an epidemic in the early 1900s. Julia Stewart and Martin Williams officially deeded Stewart Cemetery to the cemetery association in 1907. Graves of interest include that of State Representative Louis Lankford, who died in 1940. Lankford was a member of the Texas Legislature from Hunt and Rains counties and served in the Spanish-American War. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John and Ellen Stewart settled here about 1843, and John is credited with building the first pioneer home in eastern Hunt County during the Republic of Texas era. The family later sold land to the founder of nearby Commerce. The earliest legible marker is a child's grave from 1863, and the cemetery holds Confederate veterans — including the Stewart sons — as well as victims of an early-1900s epidemic.
Why it matters
It traces eastern Hunt County from its earliest Republic-era settlement through the Civil War, preserving the graves of the family credited with founding the community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Stewarts arrived in this corner of East Texas around 1843, when Texas was not yet a state but an independent republic. The Republic of Texas era was a time of raw beginnings: land was abundant and cheap, government was thin, and a family that came early could quite literally build the first house in a district and help invent the institutions that followed. Eastern Hunt County was frontier in the fullest sense.
Those earliest years were about establishing the basics of settled life. Neighbors trickled in — other families arriving in the mid-1840s — and out of that scattering of homesteads came the machinery of a functioning county: appraisers, clerks, justices of the peace. The same handful of men who cleared land and raised cabins also held the young offices that made a community more than a set of farms.
Within a generation that frontier world was swept into the Civil War, and then, decades later, into a second transformation as farmers and cattlemen poured into the area around the turn of the twentieth century. This single cemetery holds all three chapters at once — pioneer, wartime, and the later farming boom — layered in its graves.
People & events
The story begins with John and Ellen Stewart and their children, who settled here about 1843. Oral history credits John with building the first pioneer home in eastern Hunt County, and he took his place among the neighbors who filled the county's early offices. When he died about 1856, Ellen and the children stayed on, and it was the family's land that seeded the future: they sold 640 acres to William Jernigan, credited as the founding father of nearby Cowhill — the town we now call Commerce.
The cemetery's own record of loss opens with a child. Though earlier graves are believed to lie here, the oldest legible marker belongs to three-year-old Elif Cummins, buried in 1863 — a reminder of how heavily early death fell on the very young. That sorrow returned in force during an epidemic in the early 1900s, when many children were buried on this ground.
The war reached the Stewart family directly. Two of John and Ellen's sons, R. E. and John F. Stewart, joined the Confederate Army in 1861 along with other neighbors. R. E. Stewart, just twenty-nine, was killed in fighting near Little Rock, Arkansas, and was buried where he fell; his brother and other Confederate veterans came to rest here at home. Later generations tended the ground faithfully — newcomers dug the graves of the passing old settlers, and in 1907 Julia Stewart and Martin Williams formally deeded the cemetery to a cemetery association. Among the notable graves is that of State Representative Louis Lankford, a veteran of the Spanish-American War who served in the Texas Legislature for Hunt and Rains counties and died in 1940.
Its place in the American story
This is, in miniature, the story of how the American frontier became settled country. A family arrives at the far edge of organized life, builds the first house, helps stand up local government, and sells the land that becomes a town. Multiply that across thousands of communities and you have the westward expansion that defined nineteenth-century America — not as an abstraction, but as one family's homestead turning into a county.
The Civil War chapter connects this quiet ground to the great national rupture. Like communities across the South, this one sent its young men to war in 1861, and it absorbed the cost when they did not all return. A son killed far from home and buried where he fell, while his kin lie together in the family cemetery, is a story repeated in countless American places on both sides of that conflict.
Even the graves of children speak to a national truth of the age: before modern medicine, epidemics could sweep through a community and fall hardest on the young. A pioneer cemetery like this one is, among other things, an honest ledger of what it cost ordinary families to build the country.
If you visit
Walk this cemetery as a timeline rather than a single place. The oldest legible stone, a small child's marker from 1863, sits alongside graves of Confederate veterans and, later, victims of an early-1900s epidemic — so as you move among them you are stepping through pioneer settlement, war, and the farming boom that followed. Reading the dates in sequence is the best way to feel the layers.
Look for the family names that founded this place, the Stewarts above all, and for the grave of State Representative Louis Lankford, whose life reached from the Spanish-American War into the twentieth-century legislature. These are the people who turned a stretch of Republic-era wilderness into a working community.
A rural cemetery like this asks for a slower kind of visit — quiet, unhurried, attentive. It pairs naturally with a drive through the country around Commerce, a chance to trace how one family's homestead of the 1840s grew into the towns you pass on the way. Bring patience for weathered stone; the oldest inscriptions give up their secrets only to those who take the time to read them.
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
- · John Stewart
- · Ellen Stewart
- · Louis Lankford
Themes & tags
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