Wesley Chapel Cemetery
Canton, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Watkins community was settled in the mid-1800s. M. Crosby and his wife Isabell Crosby deeded land for a church and cemetery to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1872. The first recorded burial in this cemetery is that of John I. Sewell, who was buried on the site in 1870 before it was officially designated as a cemetery. A new Wesley Chapel Methodist Church was built near the Watkins school in 1922 on land deeded by Thomas G. and Carrie Barfield. They, along with early church trustees O. M. Norman, S. A. Sewell, Sr., and H. L. Paschall are buried here. A new frame chapel was built at the cemetery in 1957 by local residents. The five-acre cemetery contains about 400 graves. Among those interred here are more than 50 young children and infants, some of whom were buried with their mothers who died in childbirth. Also buried here are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The Wesley Chapel Cemetery Association maintains the site and hosts annual reunions with memorial services and picnics for descendants of pioneer settlers. The cemetery remains in use and continues to serve the area as it has for more than a century. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Watkins community took root in the mid-1800s, and in 1872 the Crosby family deeded land here to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a church and burial ground — though the first grave was dug two years earlier. Over more than a century the five-acre cemetery filled with some 400 graves, among them pioneer founders, church trustees, and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars. Its rows also hold more than fifty children and infants, some laid to rest beside mothers lost in childbirth.
Why it matters
A working country cemetery like this is a community's memory made visible — a ledger of the settlers, soldiers, and families who built and held a rural corner of Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
New Hope Cemetery
Wills Point, TX
To draw settlers to the community that became New Hope, Mexican War veteran William James set aside land after 1871 for a school, church, and cemetery, and is believed to be the first person buried here. The oldest surviving marker belongs to Frances E. Whitfield, who died in 1876, and another grave is thought to hold a woman who died while traveling the Dallas–Shreveport Road in 1880. Four Confederate soldiers rest here as well, including one who surrendered with General Robert E. Lee.
Union Grove Cemetery
Wills Point, TX
The Union Grove community grew from the 1844 arrival of settlers who built the county's first corn mill and, in time, a Baptist church and school. A local landowner donated this hilltop of oak and cedar for a burial ground in 1880. Generations later it holds the graves of veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam, tended since the 1940s by a community association.
Morris Cemetery
Canton, TX
When Sarah Morris was laid to rest here in 1866, she had been in Texas less than a decade, part of the wave of Kentucky and Upper-South families who resettled the blackland country before and after the Civil War. Her son Elijah bought the surrounding farmstead in 1886, and the family plot grew into the community burying ground for the China Grove and Denman neighborhoods. Its stones quietly record the arc of a rural settlement — Confederate and World War I veterans, and the children and elders lost to the epidemics that swept such isolated communities.
Baker Cemetery
Kemp, TX
When the Baker family's infant son William was buried in 1848, this Illinois-emigrant family plot was born. Over the decades it grew into a three-acre community cemetery of more than 800 graves. Among the dead are veterans of the Republic of Texas Army, the Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War.