Waxahachie City Cemetery
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first burial here occurred on Jan. 1, 1852, after the death of pioneer merchant Silas Killough (b. 1805), one of the founders of this community. The original 4.16 acre tract was given in 1858 to trustees of the Methodist church by Emory W. Rogers (d.1874), who was Waxahachie's first settler (1846) and donor of land for the townsite. About 1900, the cemetery was transferred from church to municipal jurisdiction. By gifts and purchases of additional land, the site has grown to 65 acres and contains about 10,000 graves.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The first grave here was dug on New Year's Day 1852 for pioneer merchant Silas Killough, one of the community's founders. Emory W. Rogers — Waxahachie's first settler and the man who donated the land for the townsite — gave the original acreage to Methodist trustees in 1858, and the church managed the ground until the city took it over around 1900. It has since grown to some 65 acres and 10,000 graves.
Why it matters
The cemetery's founding families are the same people who platted Waxahachie itself, making the burial ground a physical index of a North Texas town's earliest settlement.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Silas Killough
- · Emory W. Rogers
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hawkins House
Waxahachie, TX
Benjamin Franklin Hawkins, a member of the Peters Colony that drew settlers to North Texas, helped organize Ellis County and built a one-story house on this site in 1851. Over the following decades the home grew—expanded to two stories in the 1880s and remodeled by his son into an elegant Colonial Revival residence in 1903, complete with fluted Corinthian columns and a second-story balcony. Its layered construction reads like a timeline of the family's rising fortunes.
First Presbyterian Church Building
Waxahachie, TX
The Rev. J.A. Smiley gathered sixteen charter members into Waxahachie's First Presbyterian Church in 1871, and after an 1876 building the congregation raised this classical sanctuary in 1916–17, with modified Doric columns, beaux-arts detailing, and art-glass windows. When the church merged with another in 1979, the building became a fine-arts museum under the Ellis County Art Association. Its dignified front still commands its corner of the county seat.
Ellis County Courthouse
Waxahachie, TX
Rising from Texas granite, limestone, and marble between 1895 and 1897, the Ellis County Courthouse is a soaring example of Romanesque Revival design by noted architect J. Riely Gordon. Local legend holds that a sculptor carved the face of a beautiful local woman he admired above the east door — a romantic flourish on one of the era's grandest civic buildings.
Ellis County Courthouse
Waxahachie, TX
Ellis County went through three modest courthouses — cedar logs in 1850, then buildings in 1853 and 1874 — before commissioning San Antonio architect James Riely Gordon to design this fourth one in 1894. Its cornerstone laid on July 4, 1895, the courthouse was built of Central Texas granite and Pecos River red sandstone, with entrances oriented to the true compass points and faces carved by European stonemasons. Gordon's Richardsonian Romanesque masterpiece set a new standard for public buildings across Texas.