Willow Springs Cemetery
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Likely named for a nearby spring, this cemetery has served Southern Henderson County since 1870, when John and Mary Hand conveyed land for use as a burial site. The property was also used for Willow Springs Church and a school. The earliest known burial here is of Amanda E. (Futch) Pace (d. 1873), wife of county commissioner, the Rev. Madison touchstone pace (d. 1925). Others interred here include community leaders, government officials, farmers, and veterans of conflicts dating to the Civil War. The burial ground features curbing, woodmen of the world monuments, and a number of unmarked graves. Today, Willow Springs Cemetery remains an important link to the pioneering families that lived in this area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Probably named for a nearby spring, this cemetery has served southern Henderson County since 1870, when John and Mary Hand conveyed land that also held Willow Springs Church and a school. Its earliest known grave belongs to Amanda Pace, who died in 1873, and among those interred are community leaders, officials, farmers, and veterans reaching back to the Civil War. Curbing, Woodmen of the World monuments, and many unmarked graves dot the grounds.
Why it matters
A modest country cemetery, it remains a tangible link to the pioneering families who first farmed and worshipped in this corner of Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Beck's Chapel Cemetery
Athens, TX
Deeded from Stonewall Riddlesperger in 1901, Beck's Chapel Cemetery became the resting place of many of Henderson County's 19th-century pioneers, its earliest recorded burial dating to 1900. Interred here are members of the founding Ward, Beck and Anding families—farmers, justices of the peace and school trustees who supported the neighboring chapel and schoolhouse. A cemetery association formed in 1997 to care for the grounds, shaded by crepe myrtles and a great magnolia.
Goodgame Cemetery
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Named for a pioneering family that migrated from Alabama in the 1850s, Goodgame Cemetery has served Henderson County since the Civil War era, its first recorded burial a young girl who died in 1863 while her father was away at war. Floyd Crockett Goodgame's sons became Confederate officers, and one, a schoolteacher, returned to teach and help found the community of Turkey Creek. The ground was formally deeded in 1901 and holds veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Korea, marked by Woodmen of the World stones and family curbing.
Union Cemetery
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Around 1860 David Thompson settled this stretch of Henderson County and put Wildcat Creek to work, running a grist mill and cotton gin that anchored a small community sometimes called Thompson's Mill. His sons later gave land for a Union Church and school, and by 1885 neighbors were burying their dead on the adjoining ground. The church, school and post office faded near the turn of the century, but the cemetery endured, kept up by a local association long after the mill community itself disappeared.
Smith Cemetery
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Smith Cemetery was established in 1850 in Henderson County, Texas, in the early decades of the state's Anglo settlement. Such family and community burial grounds were frequently the first lasting institutions on newly settled land. It was designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.