Union Army P.O.W. Cemetery
Hempstead, Waller County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Several Confederate military facilities were positioned near Hempsted (2.5 mi. w), an important railroad junction, during the Civil War. Camp Groce (then about 6 mi. e) was a prisoner-of-war stockade established on the plantation of Leonard Waller Groce (1806-1873). Union Army prisoners who died at various camps were buried hear this site on the McDade Plantation, adjacent to the McDade family cemetery (about 25 yds. ne). The cemeteries were near a narrow gauge spur off the "Austin Branch" of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad, built from Houston in 1858. A yellow fever epidemic in 1864 resulted in many deaths at Camp Groce and other camps, chronicled by Aaron T. Sutton (1841-1927). a Union prisoner in Company B, 83rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Sutton noted in his journal the presence of more than 100 fresh graves here soon after his arrival at Camp Groce in 1864. Sutton later escaped from the stockade and made his way to Beaumont (115 mi. e) on foot. Crude crosses made of cedar limbs marked the prisoners' graves through the early 1900s, according to local residents. But the stream-fed woodland was cleared in the 1940s for pasture land, and all surface evidence of the cemetery was lost.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the Civil War, the rail junction near Hempstead anchored several Confederate facilities, including Camp Groce, a prisoner-of-war stockade on Leonard Waller Groce's plantation. Union prisoners who died in captivity — many during a devastating 1864 yellow fever epidemic — were buried on the neighboring McDade Plantation. Union prisoner Aaron T. Sutton recorded more than 100 fresh graves here before his escape and long journey on foot to Beaumont; by the 1940s, land-clearing erased all surface trace of the cemetery.
Why it matters
This lost burial ground bears witness to the suffering of Union prisoners deep in Confederate Texas, a reminder that the Civil War's toll reached far beyond its famous battlefields.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1864 the Civil War had settled into a grinding, exhausting struggle, and Texas sat far from the great battlefields of Virginia and Tennessee. That distance didn't make the state peaceful. It made it useful. Texas became a supply depot, a training ground, and a place to hold men the Confederacy had captured.
Hempstead mattered because of the railroad. In an era when moving soldiers, cotton, and supplies overland meant slow wagons on muddy roads, a rail junction was gold. The Houston & Texas Central line, pushed out from Houston in the late 1850s, made this stretch of Waller County a natural hub, and several Confederate military facilities grew up nearby.
One of them was Camp Groce, a prisoner-of-war stockade on the plantation of Leonard Waller Groce. The war's prisoner system was buckling across the whole country. Once the exchange system between North and South broke down, captured men no longer went home in swaps. They stayed in camps, often for months, in conditions neither side was prepared to provide.
The Gulf Coast climate added its own danger. Disease killed far more Civil War soldiers than bullets did, and in crowded camps with poor sanitation, an epidemic could sweep through with terrible speed. In 1864, yellow fever did exactly that.
People & events
Leonard Waller Groce, born in 1806, belonged to a family that had been part of Anglo Texas since its early colonial days. His plantation, roughly six miles east of where this marker stands, became the site of the stockade that carried his name. Union prisoners held there lived behind walls on land built for cotton, not for captives.
Among those prisoners was Aaron T. Sutton, a young soldier of Company B, 83rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Sutton kept a journal, and that simple habit is why we know anything about this place at all. Soon after he arrived at Camp Groce in 1864, he wrote that more than 100 fresh graves lay here. It is a stark, unadorned record of how quickly men were dying.
The dead came from Camp Groce and other camps in the area. They were buried on the neighboring McDade Plantation, beside the McDade family's own cemetery, near a narrow gauge rail spur. The yellow fever epidemic of 1864 swelled their numbers.
Sutton did not wait to become one of them. He escaped from the stockade and set out on foot toward Beaumont, more than a hundred miles to the east, a long and risky trek through hostile country. He lived until 1927, long enough to carry his memories of this place well into the twentieth century.
Its place in the American story
When most Americans think of Civil War prisons, they think of Andersonville in Georgia, whose horrors became a national scandal. Places like this one are a reminder that the prisoner story was far bigger. Camps were scattered across the South, including deep in Texas, and men died in them quietly, far from home and far from any newspaper's notice.
This site also shows how fragile the memory of such places can be. For decades, local residents remembered rough crosses made from cedar limbs standing over the graves. Then, in the 1940s, the woodland was cleared for pasture, and every surface trace disappeared. The men buried here were not erased by war, but by time and ordinary land use.
That loss is part of the lesson. Much of America's history is held together by a few fragile threads: a soldier's journal, a family's memory, a marker on a roadside. Sutton's notes and the recollections of local people are why these Union dead are remembered at all.
It also widens our sense of who the war touched. A young man from Ohio could end his life in a Texas pasture, buried among strangers. The war's reach was truly national, and so was its cost.
If you visit
Come to this marker knowing that there is nothing left to see of the cemetery itself, and that is the point. The ground around you was once wooded and stream-fed, dotted with cedar crosses. Today it is quiet country, and the graves lie unseen beneath it.
Take a moment to picture the landscape the marker describes: the rail spur, the plantation fields, the small McDade family cemetery nearby. The marker places that family burial ground just to the northeast, a useful reminder that these prisoners rest beside local people who lived and died here too.
This stop pairs naturally with a drive through Waller County and the Hempstead area, where the railroad shaped how the region grew. If you are tracing the Civil War in Texas, it offers a striking counterpoint to the battle sites along the coast, a place about captivity and disease rather than combat.
It is a good spot for a moment of reflection, especially with kids. Ask them what it would mean to be remembered only because someone wrote your grave down in a diary. It makes a quiet, lasting impression.
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
- · Aaron T. Sutton
- · Leonard Waller Groce
Related events
- · Camp Groce prisoner-of-war camp
- · 1864 yellow fever epidemic
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hempstead, C.S.A.
Hempstead, TX
During the Civil War, Hempstead was one of Texas's busiest Confederate hubs, its railroad feeding troops, manufactured goods, and supplies toward Houston and the coast. Camps Groce and Hebert trained soldiers, and Camp Groce grew into the state's second-largest prisoner-of-war camp, taking its first Union captives in 1863; nearby mills and shops turned out textiles, wagons, and harness for the army. In the spring of 1865, troops gathered here learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and Confederate generals bade their men farewell in one of the war's last scenes.
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Named for Justo Liendo, the original Spanish grantee, this 1853 estate became the model plantation of Leonard W. Groce, who ringed his mansion with its own industries. During the Civil War it served as Camp Groce, first a training camp and then a Confederate prison, and in 1865 it was occupied by Gen. George Custer, years before Little Bighorn. From 1873 to 1911 it belonged to the family of celebrated sculptor Elisabet Ney, who is commemorated on the grounds.
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