Weldon Cemetery
Houston County, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Thompson Brothers Lumber Company (later Champion Lumber Company) donated four acres of land at this site to the people of the Weldon Community for a cemetery in 1912. The first persons buried here that year were one-year-old Louise Driskell and her two-year-old brother, Leo, both victims of diphtheria. Among the graves are those of area pioneers and their descendants, as well as veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The Weldon Civic Club and a cemetery association care for the historic graveyard.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Thompson Brothers Lumber Company deeded four acres to the Weldon community in 1912, the new burial ground opened with a heartbreak: its first graves held two small children, Louise and Leo Driskell, lost within a single year to diphtheria. Set in the piney woods of East Texas timber country, the cemetery gathered generations of area pioneers alongside veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam. A civic club and cemetery association have tended the grounds ever since.
Why it matters
A rural cemetery like this is a community's memory book, holding the founders, families, and soldiers who built and defended a small Texas settlement over more than a century.
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Related people
- · Louise Driskell
- · Leo Driskell
Themes & tags
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