Terry Cemetery
San Saba, San Saba County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Terry Cemetery exists as a reminder of the first pioneers to arrive in this area. In 1859, Stephen Woodson Terry (1828-1913) and wife Volumnia Jane (Adams) (1830-1901), granddaughter of Revolutionary War Soldier Brittain Adams, moved their family to Texas from Tennessee. The cemetery has served as a resting place for Terry descendants and family friends since 1880. The first burial is that of Pocahontas Terry (1869-1880), the ten-year-old daughter of Volumnia and Stephen. Stephen served the community as a member of the frontier organization and as the tenth Sheriff of San Saba County. Notable burials include Lloyd Warden Terry who served as County Judge and County Attorney for 27 years.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1859, Stephen Woodson Terry and his wife Volumnia Jane moved their family from Tennessee to this part of San Saba County, joining the first wave of pioneers to the area. The family cemetery has held Terry descendants and friends since 1880, when their ten-year-old daughter Pocahontas became its first burial. Stephen served the frontier community as its tenth county sheriff, and later kin like Judge Lloyd Warden Terry carried the family's public service forward.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of a founding frontier family whose members helped organize law and governance in a newly settled Texas county.
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Related people
- · Stephen Woodson Terry
- · Volumnia Jane Terry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
San Saba Lodge No. 225, A. F. & A. M.
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Freemasonry ran through the founding of San Saba County, whose organizers were largely Masons; when the first courthouse rose in 1857, the county let them meet there. San Saba Lodge No. 225 received its charter in 1859, drawing county officials, Texas Rangers, and frontier settlers, and its members promptly built a combined school and lodge hall—seeding the San Saba Masonic College chartered in 1863. Financial strain during Reconstruction and a damaging association with the vigilante 'San Saba Mob' led the lodge to surrender its charter in 1882.
San Saba Cemetery
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Originally the Odd Fellows Cemetery, this burial ground began in 1883 when the local IOOF lodge bought ten acres north of old San Saba and maintained it for forty-five years. In 1929 the newly incorporated San Saba Cemetery Association purchased the grounds and additional acreage for token sums, and in 1935 burials from the town's earliest city cemetery were reinterred here. The cemetery stands as a continuing record of San Saba's earliest citizens and its changing community.
San Saba County Courthouse
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San Saba County was created by the Texas Legislature in 1856, and a frame courthouse and later a stone one served its people on this site through the nineteenth century. In 1910, with the city newly incorporated and a railroad connection on the way, residents authorized a grand replacement. Alabama architect Walter Chamberlain designed this Classical Revival building of pressed brick and rusticated sandstone, finished just as the first train arrived in August 1911.
The Texas Rangers and the San Saba Mob
San Saba, TX
Isolated from courts and railroads, San Saba County in the mid-1800s spawned vigilante "mobs" that first promised protection and then curdled into a secret terror society. By the 1880s the shadowy San Saba Mob — organized like a fraternal lodge, complete with secret signs and midnight meetings at places like Buzzards' Water Hole — was ambushing settlers, leaving victims marked by nine bullet holes. In 1896 the state sent in the Texas Rangers under Sgt. W. J. L. Sullivan and later Capt. Bill McDonald, who paired with District Attorney W. C. Linden to move trials out of the county and finally break the Mob's grip by 1900.