Weeks Chapel Cemetery
Burkeville, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This land was part of an 1838 grant to James Weeks (d.1863) in Jasper County, becoming part of Newton County in 1846. Weeks built a home about one-half mile south of this site, and married Catherine Hardy (b.1831) in 1847. They are presumed buried in the nearby Hardy Cemetery, about one-half mile east. In 1887 Weeks' son James Robert (1850-1936) and his wife, Melvina Robinson (1840-1919) Weeks, granted one acre at this site to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. A crude building was erected to serve as a church and school for area settlers. When a native of the area, Jim Eudaley (1866-1893), was killed in a logging accident near Kirbyville (26 mi.S), J. R. Weeks, by then a Methodist minister, suggested a burial behind Weeks' Chapel. The cemetery subsequently served surrounding communities, including Brookeland (16 mi.NW), Farrsville (5 mi. SE), Harrisburg (2 mi. SW), and Weeks (2 mi. N), and now contains some 300 burials. In 1904 a new church and school building was erected, and the congregation changed its denomination by organizing the Missionary Baptist Church. The school later consolidated with Farrsville, but the church and cemetery remain the focus of an annual homecoming. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery sits on land first granted to James Weeks in 1838, in territory that passed from Jasper into the new Newton County in 1846. In 1887 his son, Methodist minister J.R. Weeks, and family deeded an acre for a church and school, and the burial ground began when a young logger named Jim Eudaley was interred behind the chapel after a fatal accident. Serving a scattering of surrounding communities, the site grew to some 300 graves and remains the focus of an annual homecoming, even as its congregation shifted from Methodist to Missionary Baptist in 1904.
Why it matters
Weeks Chapel shows how a single frontier land grant could seed a church, a school, and a cemetery that anchored the social life of the East Texas piney woods for generations.
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Related people
- · James Weeks
- · James Robert Weeks
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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