The Survey Community
Burkesville, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William Williams, an early 1800s Sabine Valley pioneer, obtained a large land grant in 1834 from the Republic of Mexico. His surveyed land attracted settlers, who called the location "The Survey". In 1847, Wade H. Mattox (1800-1863) built the first frame house in the settlement, using lumber hauled from Alexandria, LA., by a neighbor, Ezekiel Cobb (1825-1864). By the 1850s, the survey had settlers named Booker, Bush, Dade, Clark, Collins, Conner, Droddy, Garlington, Hardy, Joiner, Jones, McGee, Mitchell, Smith, Trotti, and Weeks. The economy was based on farming and (later) lumbering. At least 16 survey community residents fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-65). In 1889, the Methodists built a church on land given by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Mattox. The building was also used for school purposes. Surveyville Post Office, opened in 1903, was soon renamed "Mayflower". Population shifts starting in the 1940s caused the school to consolidate with Burkeville (1949), the post office to close (1951), and the church to disband (1961). Public facilities, including the church building, Mattox Cemetery, and several other burial grounds, are now maintained by the Survey Cemetery Association.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded on land William Williams surveyed under an 1834 Mexican grant, 'The Survey' drew settlers who built the community's first frame house in 1847 from lumber hauled from Alexandria, Louisiana. Farming and later lumbering sustained the families named Booker, Mattox, Cobb, and others, and at least sixteen residents fought for the Confederacy. Shifting population after the 1940s consolidated the school, closed the post office, and disbanded the church, leaving cemeteries and old buildings tended by a local association.
Why it matters
The Survey traces the full life cycle of a frontier East Texas community, from a Mexican-era land grant to a quiet cluster of preserved burial grounds.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The story of The Survey begins in a Texas that was not yet part of the United States. In 1834, William Williams, an early pioneer of the Sabine Valley, obtained a large land grant from the Republic of Mexico. This was the frontier era, when title to vast tracts of East Texas came from Mexican authorities and land itself was the great draw pulling settlers westward.
The land Williams surveyed gave the future community its plain, practical name — settlers simply called the location "The Survey." In deep East Texas, near the Louisiana line in what is now Newton County, this was heavily wooded country where the first task of any settler was to carve a farm and a home out of the timber.
The community grew across the middle decades of the nineteenth century, through the years of the young Republic, statehood, and then the Civil War. Its economy rested first on farming and later on lumbering — the two pursuits that shaped so much of the Piney Woods.
People & events
The settlement's first landmark arrived in 1847, when Wade H. Mattox, who lived from 1800 to 1863, built the first frame house in the community. The lumber for it was hauled all the way from Alexandria, Louisiana, by a neighbor, Ezekiel Cobb, who lived from 1825 to 1864 — a small act of frontier cooperation that says a great deal about how these communities were built, board by board and favor by favor.
By the 1850s the survey had gathered a cluster of families whose names the marker records — Booker, Bush, Clark, Collins, Conner, Garlington, Hardy, Joiner, Jones, McGee, Mitchell, Smith, Trotti, Weeks, and others. When the Civil War came in 1861, at least sixteen residents of the community went off to fight for the Confederacy, a heavy draw on so small a place.
In the decades that followed, the settlement built the institutions of a settled life. In 1889 the Methodists raised a church on land given by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Mattox, and the building did double duty as a school. A post office called Surveyville opened in 1903 and was soon renamed Mayflower. Then, beginning in the 1940s, population shifts pulled the community apart: the school consolidated with Burkeville in 1949, the post office closed in 1951, and the church disbanded in 1961.
Its place in the American story
The Survey traces the full life cycle of an American frontier community, from birth to quiet dissolution, and that completeness is what makes it worth remembering. It opens under a Mexican land grant, passes through the Republic and statehood, sends its men to the Civil War, and matures into a place with a church, a school, and a post office — the whole arc of settlement compressed into one rural crossroads.
Its economy — farming first, then lumbering — mirrors the story of the East Texas Piney Woods and of countless timber communities across the South, places that rose with the forests and thinned out as the world around them changed. The renaming of the post office from Surveyville to Mayflower even carries a faint echo of the older American origin story.
And its ending is the most common ending of all. When population shifts hollowed out the community in the mid-twentieth century, the institutions closed one by one, leaving behind cemeteries and a few old buildings. This is how thousands of small American places have passed — not in a single catastrophe, but in the slow drift of families toward towns and jobs elsewhere.
If you visit
What survives here is tended, not abandoned, and that makes the visit gentler than a true ghost town. The church building, the Mattox Cemetery, and several other burial grounds are cared for by the Survey Cemetery Association — a sign that descendants and neighbors still hold this ground in memory.
Walk the cemeteries and you'll meet the names the marker lists — Mattox, Cobb, and the families who came in the 1850s. Reading a settlement's founders off its headstones is one of the quiet pleasures of a place like this, and here the record runs from the frontier generation forward.
Set deep in the Newton County woods near the Louisiana border, this is a stop for travelers who like their history off the main road. Picture lumber hauled by wagon from Alexandria in 1847, a frame house rising among the pines, and a community that lived, worked, worshipped, and finally scattered — leaving these carefully kept grounds as its memorial.
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
- · William Williams
- · Wade H. Mattox
- · Ezekiel Cobb
Themes & tags
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