Valera Cemetery
Valera, Coleman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad established a railway line about eight miles southwest of Coleman in 1904. The town of Valera developed in the area around the train depot. Its business district, established parallel to the railroad, reflected the needs of its citizens. Businesses included a post office, a hotel, a bank, a flour mill, a cotton gin, an opera house, grocery stores, a blacksmith shop, a cafe and a water well in the middle of the street. Recognizing the need for a community cemetery, Mrs. Minnie K. Harris deeded more than five acres of land in 1922. One of two cemeteries serving the community, it contains more than 300 marked graves, and at least five unmarked graves. The first recorded burial was that of Mrs. N. C. Kidwell in 1922. Many prominent citizens of the area are buried here, including Dr. H. H. Mitchell (1866-1927) who came to Valera in 1905. The only doctor in town, Dr. Mitchell helped establish the first school, was a deacon in the Baptist church and president of the First State Bank. Also buried here is local law enforcement officer Richard A. Pauly. The cemetery contains burials of veterans from the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Valera sprang up early in the twentieth century around a Santa Fe railway depot, its main street lined with the ordinary machinery of a shipping town — depot, bank, gin, mill, and an opera house. When the community needed a place to bury its dead, a local landowner deeded the acreage in 1922, and the grounds filled with the town's doctors, lawmen, and veterans of four American wars.
Why it matters
A single country cemetery preserves the full arc of a Texas railroad town, from its boom-era founders to the soldiers it sent across a half-century of conflict.
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Related people
- · Minnie K. Harris
- · Dr. H. H. Mitchell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Santa Anna Cemetery
Santa Anna, TX
When the Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1886, Santa Anna boomed as a cattle-shipping point, and this cemetery grew with it—its oldest dated monument marking sixteen-year-old Mary Ashley, who died in 1885. Among the buried are the town's first station agent and Texas Rangers John R. Banister and John Benecke Bachman, along with veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam. Fraternal sections for Masons, Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, and the Eastern Star reflect the social fabric of the community.
Route of Old Military Road
Santa Anna, TX
Opened in the 1850s, this military road carried supply trains and cavalry along the chain of U.S. forts that guarded the Texas frontier, running from Fort Belknap on the Brazos down toward Fort Mason and Fort Clark near the Rio Grande. Notable soldiers traveled its route, among them Col. Robert E. Lee, who a decade later would command Confederate armies. The road knit together the far-flung outposts meant to shield settlers.
Western Trail Marker
Coleman, TX
This tablet, placed by a local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, honors the Western Trail that funneled vast herds of longhorns north through Coleman in the decades after the Civil War. For nearly thirty years, cowboys drove cattle "up the trail" along this route, part of the great open-range cattle drives that defined the postwar Texas economy.
Robert M. Coleman
Coleman, TX
Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.