Stockton Family Cemetery
Bartlett, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Stockton Family Cemetery is located on land originally granted in 1859 by Texas governor Hardin R. Runnels to Moses Allen, a veteran of the Siege of Bexar. Douglas Hayden Stockton and his wife Mary Elizabeth (White) brought their family to Bell County in 1870. With partner J.O. Darby, the Stocktons purchased over 1,200 acres of the Moses Allen land grant that year. The Stocktons soon built a residence near this site. This cemetery was established in April 1890 upon the death of the Stocktons' fifteen-year-old son, Simion Carothers Stockton. Years later, on December 15, 1908, Douglas and Mary Elizabeth Stokton legally designated this property as a family cemetery. The cemetery, which contains over eighty graves and is still in use by the Stocktons' descendants, documents over one hundred years of family history. Those interred here include Douglas and Mary Elizabeth Stockton and twelve of their fourteen children; Ead White, a former slave who remained with the family after the Civil War; numerous children and infants; and three family members who drowned in a hurricane in Corpus Christi in 1919. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded on land first granted to a veteran of the Siege of Bexar, this cemetery began in 1890 with the burial of the Stocktons' fifteen-year-old son and grew alongside a family that settled Bell County in 1870. Among the more than eighty graves is Ead White, a formerly enslaved man who stayed with the family after the Civil War, and members lost to the deadly 1919 Corpus Christi hurricane.
Why it matters
A working family cemetery still tended by descendants, it quietly documents more than a century of Texas settlement, emancipation's aftermath, and the disasters that shaped Gulf Coast life.
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Related people
- ยท Douglas Hayden Stockton
- ยท Mary Elizabeth Stockton
- ยท Moses Allen
- ยท Ead White
Themes & tags
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