Westbrook-Walker Cemetery
Milano, Milam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(One-fourth miles southeast) Georgia native Ervin Westbrook and his wife Rachel McCorra Walker left their Mississippi farm for Texas in 1858. They were joined by Rachel's brother, John H. Walker, and his family. The two families settled in this area in 1859. The cemetery began with the burial of Walker's wife, Mary Frances Wells, in 1864. It served as a graveyard for the Westbrook and Walker families and a number of their neighbors until the last burials here in the early 1920s. Among the 20 to 30 people buried here are Civil War veterans Ervin Westbrook, William P. Walker, and John Walker. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ervin Westbrook and his wife Rachel, joined by her brother John Walker, left the Deep South in 1858 to build new farms on the Texas prairie near present-day Milano. Their family graveyard opened in 1864 with the burial of John Walker's wife and served the two clans and their neighbors into the 1920s. Among the two to three dozen laid to rest here are three Civil War veterans of the founding families.
Why it matters
Small family cemeteries like this one are the quiet ledgers of frontier migration, marking where Southern families set down roots in antebellum Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ervin Westbrook
- · Rachel McCorra Walker
- · John H. Walker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pin Oak Cemetery
Gause, TX
Stretching along Pin Oak Creek, this cemetery served a farming settlement whose earliest families, many related and drawn from Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama, were in place by the 1850s. Walker P. Perkins deeded the land to trustees in 1896, though the earliest known burials, of Charles Shafer and James D. Faubion, date to 1861, and older unmarked graves may lie beneath. Its obelisks, curbing, and veterans' graves reach back to the Civil War, and the community declined after World War II as families moved to the cities.
Moss Ragsdale Cemetery
Rockdale, TX
This family burial ground dates to the 1850s, on land formally set aside in 1902 "to be used exclusively as a burying ground." It is named for Matthew Moss—a Virginia-born War of 1812 veteran and Red River steamboat man who brought his family to Milam County around 1845—and his son-in-law James Ragsdale, a veteran of the Texas Revolution and the first person buried here. Several Confederate veterans and members of the extended Moss family lie nearby, close to the vanished townsite of San Andres.
North Elm Cemetery
Milam County, TX
Settlers from Alabama began arriving at North Elm in 1867, among them John George Lagrone, whose 1870 stone is the oldest here. Land was deeded for the cemetery beginning in 1883, with later additions. The graves include fourteen Confederate soldiers and two Texas Rangers, brothers Ellzey and James Perkins—a roll of the pioneers and veterans who settled the area.
Lewis Family Cemetery
Buckholts, TX
This burial ground reaches back to the 1830s colonies of Sterling C. Robertson, when Thomas Curry—whose late wife Satsa Vann was a Cherokee leader's daughter—brought his family to a league of land along Little River. His descendants married into the Lewis family, prominent in building the communities of Corinth, Buckholts and Cameron; Squire William Michael Lewis, a justice of the peace and Confederate cavalryman, was buried beneath a ranch oak in 1867, founding the cemetery. A typhoid epidemic a decade later added more graves to a plot whose burials mostly predate 1900.