Winterfield Cemetery
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery began on the farm purchased in 1879 by July G. and Martha Howard Garner. Land was set aside for a family cemetery upon the deaths of the Garners' nephew, Joel S. Bright, and niece, Jessie L. Webb, in November 1887. This family cemetery eventually became a community graveyard with more than 500 graves. Among those buried here were farmers, city and county officials, and church leaders. Site maintenance, completed in the early 1900s by family members, was succeeded in 1971 by the Winterfield Cemetery Association. The site continues to serve the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground began on the farm July G. and Martha Howard Garner bought in 1879, when land was set aside after the 1887 deaths of two of their young relatives. What started as a family plot grew into a community graveyard of more than five hundred graves, holding farmers, church leaders, and city and county officials. Family members tended it into the early 1900s before an association took over in 1971.
Why it matters
Like many rural Southern cemeteries, it charts the growth of a farming community from a single family's homestead into a shared civic institution across generations.
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Related people
- · July G. Garner
- · Martha Howard Garner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Winterfield Methodist Church
Longview, TX
Winterfield Methodist Church grew from open-air camp meetings held in this East Texas farm community as early as the 1870s, gatherings that drew settlers from Gregg, Upshur, and Harrison counties. In the early 1880s the meeting site was set aside permanently for worship, and a succession of buildings — two small 1880s sanctuaries, then churches in 1929 and 1957 — has served the congregation since. It continues to provide civic and religious leadership for the surrounding community.
New Providence Cemetery
Longview, TX
This Gregg County cemetery grew up around the New Providence Missionary Baptist Church, founded in the 1880s, with its first recorded burial in 1896. Fire, windstorm, and lightning destroyed the church, and the congregation disbanded—reorganizing only briefly to tend the graves. Among the fifty-eight burials rest veterans of five American wars, a former county judge, and a former district judge.
Site of Earpville
Longview, TX
Earpville was settled in the late 1840s by James Earp and his relatives from Alabama, growing along a stagecoach line into a hub with a post office, stage stop, Methodist church, and stores that served the region's farmers. When part of Earp's homesite was sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870, the new town of Longview rose beside the tracks and Earpville faded away. Its disappearance is a classic case of the railroad choosing a town's fate.
O. H. Methvin
Longview, TX
Georgia-born O. H. Methvin came to Texas around 1848 with his wife Margaret and his father, settling on land in what was then Upshur County. In 1870 he gave 100 acres to the Southern Pacific Railroad, an act that founded the city of Longview; three years later it became the seat of the newly organized Gregg County. Methvin's land gift turned a railroad stop into a county town.