Winfield Cemetery
Miller's Cove, Titus County, Texas
Marker Inscription
WINFIELD CEMETERY BROTHERS CALVIN AND WILLIAM BARRETT CAME TO TEXAS DURING THE EARLY 1850s AND THEY SETTLED IN TITUS COUNTY IN 1853. THE AREA WHERE THEY SETTLED CAME TO BE KNOWN AS THE COMMUNITY OF BARRETT. IN 1892 THE COMMUNITY’S NAME WAS CHANGED TO WINFIELD, IN HONOR OF THE GENERAL PASSENGER AGENT FOR THE TEXAS AND ST. LOUIS RAILWAY. WINFIELD CEMETERY’S EARLIEST MARKED GRAVES ARE THOSE FOR MOTHER AND DAUGHTER MARY E. BINNION SMITH AND CORA SMITH, WHO BOTH DIED IN 1898. WINFIELD CEMETERY IS ALSO THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF WINFIELD’S FIRST DOCTOR, RALPH LESLIE BECK. THE CEMETERY CONTAINS GRAVES OF VETERANS OF THE CIVIL WAR, SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, KOREAN WAR AND VIETNAM WAR. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2007
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Brothers Calvin and William Barrett settled in Titus County in 1853, and the community that grew around them, first called Barrett, was renamed Winfield in 1892 to honor a passenger agent of the Texas and St. Louis Railway. The cemetery's earliest marked graves date to 1898, and it holds the town's first doctor among its dead. Its rows of stones bear witness to veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Why it matters
Named for a railroad man, the cemetery captures how the rails reshaped and renamed frontier Texas towns — and, in its span of veterans' graves, a single small community's service across a century of American wars.
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Related people
- · Calvin Barrett
- · William Barrett
Themes & tags
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