Wimberly Cemetery
Shelbyville, Shelby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery originally served the early community of Paul’s store. William A. Paul opened a store near here after the Civil War. A previous community was named Terrapin Neck. The cemetery was established upon the death of Clarinda (Jones) Wimberly, who was buried at the site in 1870. Her husband, Watford Wimberly buried her on their homestead; after Watford’s 1886 death and burial at the site, his son sold the property in 1891, reserving one acre as a community cemetery. The parker and strickland families each sold additional property to the cemetery and the site now encompasses 5.7 acres. A committee organized in 1973 to oversee the cemetery, which serves as a record of the area’s early settlers.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery grew from the East Texas community of Paul's Store, opened after the Civil War near an earlier settlement called Terrapin Neck. It began in 1870 when Watford Wimberly buried his wife Clarinda on the family homestead; after his own death in 1886, a son reserved an acre as a community cemetery, and neighboring families later expanded it. A committee has overseen the grounds since 1973, preserving a record of the area's earliest settlers.
Why it matters
Wimberly Cemetery marks the transition of a private homestead grave into a shared community burial ground, a common thread in how rural East Texas settlements took root after the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
After the Civil War, the piney woods of East Texas around Shelbyville filled in slowly, community by community, store by store. This was rural frontier country where a settlement often took its name and its center from something as simple as a general store or a bend in a creek. Before the place near this cemetery was known as Paul's Store, an earlier community here carried the wonderfully vivid name of Terrapin Neck.
The late nineteenth century—Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—was a period of quiet, determined settlement in this part of Texas. Families claimed homesteads, cleared land, and built lives far from any city. There were few churches, fewer schools, and often no formal town at all; the institutions that bind a community together had to be created from scratch by the settlers themselves.
A cemetery, in that world, was one of the very first shared institutions a community created. It usually began not as a planned public space but as a family's private grief, marked on their own land—and only later grew into something the whole neighborhood shared.
People & events
This cemetery's story begins with a single burial and a grieving husband. When Clarinda Jones Wimberly died in 1870, her husband, Watford Wimberly, laid her to rest right there on their own homestead. In the rural South of that era, this was entirely ordinary—home burial on family land was often the only option—but it was also the seed from which everything else grew.
When Watford himself died in 1886, he was buried beside her at the same site. Then, in 1891, his son sold the family property, but he had the foresight to reserve one acre as a community cemetery. In that decision, a private family grave became a public trust—a place that belonged to the whole neighborhood rather than to one family alone.
The community's other landmark was William A. Paul, who opened a store near here after the Civil War, giving the settlement of Paul's Store its name and its gathering place. Over the years the cemetery grew as neighbors gave more ground: the Parker and Strickland families each sold additional property, until the site reached its present 5.7 acres. In 1973, a committee organized to oversee it, ensuring that this record of the area's earliest settlers would be tended for generations to come.
Its place in the American story
The story of Wimberly Cemetery is the story of how thousands of rural American communities were born. Across the post-Civil War South and West, the pattern repeated again and again: a family buried a loved one on their homestead, neighbors began to bury their dead nearby, and a private grave quietly matured into a shared community cemetery. It is one of the most common—and most overlooked—ways that scattered settlers became a genuine community.
That transformation matters because it marks a threshold. When people decide that a burial ground belongs to everyone, they are declaring that they are no longer isolated homesteaders but a place with a shared past and a shared future. Reserving that single acre in 1891 was, in its modest way, an act of civic founding.
The names attached to this ground—Wimberly, Paul, Parker, Strickland—are the names of the ordinary people who did the unglamorous work of settling America's rural frontier. They didn't lead armies or hold high office, but they built the small communities that, taken together, are the real fabric of the nation.
If you visit
This is a place to appreciate the deep roots of a rural East Texas community. As you walk the 5.7 acres, remember that the oldest part of the ground began as a family homestead grave in 1870, and that the whole cemetery grew outward from that first resting place by the generosity of neighbors who sold or gave their land over the years.
The setting itself is the attraction: the quiet of the Shelbyville countryside, the piney woods that have always defined this region, and the sense of a place that grew organically rather than by any grand plan. Look for the older markers to find the earliest families, and picture the vanished community of Paul's Store—and, before it, Terrapin Neck—that once gathered nearby.
A committee has cared for these grounds since 1973, so treat the cemetery as the living, tended place it remains: keep to the paths between plots and leave every marker undisturbed. It makes a rewarding stop on a leisurely drive through Shelby County, the kind of place that rewards travelers who like their history quiet, rural, and real.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Watford Wimberly
- · Clarinda Jones Wimberly
- · William A. Paul
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Bickham House
Shelbyville, TX
Frederick Lee Bickham, a prominent landowner and rancher, built this East Texas home between 1885 and 1888 on the site of his stepfather's earlier house, which had burned. The timber—cedar, cypress, and heart pine—was cut from the surrounding property, and here Bickham raised his family alongside his stepsiblings. Restored in 1972 and renamed "Welcome Hall," the house survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Sardis Methodist Church
Center, TX
In 1872 neighbors in this rural Shelby County community joined to organize a congregation, felling trees to raise a log meeting house; in 1894 J. M. Hughes deeded two acres and members built a new wooden sanctuary named Sardis. Served by circuit-riding preachers into the 1940s, the church closed in 1972 but was revived in 1986 and still hosts weddings, funerals and homecomings.
Site of the Last Battle
Shelbyville, TX
This spot marks the final clash, on August 14, 1844, of the Regulator–Moderator War, a bitter feud between rival vigilante factions that convulsed Shelby County from 1841 to 1844. The violence claimed many lives and destroyed property until the Republic of Texas sent General James Smith and militia to disarm both sides and restore order. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936.
First County Seat of Shelby County
Shelbyville, TX
Founded before 1825 and first called Nashville, this settlement became the original seat of what is now Shelby County, its first courthouse standing on this spot. In the 1840s it became a flashpoint of the notorious Regulator-Moderator War, one of the bloodiest vigilante feuds in early Texas. The same ground later mustered troops for frontier defense, the Texas army, and, decades on, Confederate service.