Historic Markers in Texas

Nacogdoches, TX

Once called the "American Cemetery," Oak Grove sits on land granted in 1826 to empresario Haden Edwards, leader of the Fredonian Rebellion, who is buried here. Its graves read like a roster of the Texas Republic: signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, veterans of San Jacinto, Sam Houston's secretary of war and personal physician, early millionaires, a master architect, and formerly enslaved men and women. Burials relocated from an older Spanish cemetery reach back to a stone marked "Father Mendoza, 1718."

Gainesville, TX

In the 1860s George Sanford Norrid brought his wife Tabitha and family from Missouri to this part of Cooke County, opening their home for church services. In 1875 Norrid and F.M. Dougherty deeded land for a Methodist Episcopal church and cemetery, and when Tabitha died in January 1876 she became the first burial in what grew into Oak Grove Cemetery. The congregation used the building for both worship and school until 1884, when they moved it to nearby Woodbine, leaving the cemetery as the community's lasting memorial.

Aubrey, TX

Organized in 1880 under trees and a brush arbor, this Methodist congregation raised its first building the following year on land donated by a retired circuit-riding minister. Neighbors hauled lumber by wagon from East Texas sawmills, and contributions to the effort even included a horse. As the community's first church, it went on to serve five generations of local families.

Decatur, TX

Organized in 1878 with just fourteen members, this Methodist congregation took root in the farming country northeast of Decatur during the decades when rural Texas was still filling in with settlers. Its first sanctuary was hauled to this site in 1902, and the tradition of an August revival camp meeting long marked the community's calendar. It endures as one of Wise County's oldest rural churches.

Austin, TX

First settled in the 1840s, this community west of Austin cycled through several names — Live Oak Springs, Shiloh, Oatmanville — before settling on Oak Hill around 1900. Its lasting mark on Texas came from the ground: limestone quarries opened here in 1882, and a dedicated rail line carried ten carloads a day to the capitol construction site in Austin. By local estimate, a third of the capitol's walls are lined with Oak Hill stone.

Richmond, TX

In 1915, eighteen African American residents of Richmond, led by the Rev. A. C. Ray, gathered to found their own congregation, building a brush arbor on an oak-covered rise and worshipping in a member's home until they could buy the land. By 1916 they owned the site and had raised a sanctuary. Oak Hill Baptist Church grew into a center of worship, music, and outreach for the surrounding community.

Richmond, TX

Oak Hill Cemetery in Richmond, seat of Fort Bend County, was established in 1918 and later recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2004. Burial grounds founded in the early twentieth century often reflect a town's growth and the need for organized, community-maintained interment. It remains a resting place tied to the county's residents and their history.

Burton, TX

When the town of Burton was founded in 1869, its organizers set aside 5.8 acres here for a burial ground, and the wife of the land's previous owner was among the first laid to rest in 1871. Civic leaders bought the tract and chartered the Burton Cemetery Association in 1890, aided by a Ladies Auxiliary formed in 1900. By the 1920s locals knew it simply as "Oak Hill," and a revived association cares for it today.

Lampasas, TX

Hartwell Fountain sold ten acres to the City of Lampasas in 1872 to create what was first called City Cemetery, renamed Oak Hill in 1908. For more than half a century the ground was tended by the Ladies Cemetery Association, a group of local women who cared for it from 1891 until the city took over in 1948. Buried here are pioneers, prominent citizens, and veterans reaching back through the Civil War to the Texas Revolution.

Goliad, TX

The oldest headstone in this Goliad burial ground marks a grave from 1843, and a city ordinance formally named the site Oak Hill Cemetery in 1854. Set on the rise once known as College Hill, it holds nearly a thousand known graves, including many prominent figures of early Texas. The city tended the grounds until 1882, when a cemetery association took over, and no new lots have been sold since the early 1900s.

Gilmer, TX

Organized around 1870, this was the first Baptist congregation in its corner of Upshur County, first gathering in a one-room log schoolhouse. In 1884 Mrs. Carrie V. Johnson donated more than two acres, and a carpenter named Hardin soon raised a frame church. Renamed Oak Hill Missionary Baptist around 1900 to reflect the congregation's evangelical spirit, the church built its present sanctuary in 1948.

San Antonio, TX

Methodist circuit rider John Wesley DeVilbiss came to the Republic of Texas in 1842 to preach along its southwestern Hispanic frontier, working to build harmony among the region's mingling cultures. In April 1844 he delivered what is remembered as the first English-language sermon ever given in San Antonio. He inspired the founding of Oak Island Church in the late 1860s; the 1872 building still holds furniture he and his son made, and he rests in its cemetery.

Teague, TX

Organized on September 11, 1847, by five charter members on land donated by one of their husbands, Oak Island was the first church in what would become Freestone County. Under the Rev. John Limber it flourished, counting 102 members and 88 Sunday-school children by 1873. But when the railroad bypassed it and drew people toward Mexia, the congregation dwindled and finally disbanded in 1899, leaving its pioneer dead in the church cemetery.

Bellville, TX

This burial ground began on the homestead of Frederick William Luhn, buried here in 1854 after he and his wife bought nearly 700 acres in 1848. His widow later remarried, and the family opened the site for neighbors' burials as need arose, deeding parcels and eventually forming an association that has cared for it since the late 1800s. Its stones chronicle generations of Bellville families.

Decatur, TX

Formally established in 1878 when William T. Perry deeded land to Decatur's mayor, this burial ground already held graves reaching back to 1857, evidence of an earlier private cemetery. Managed in turns by the city and a citizens' association, and enlarged repeatedly by gifts of land, it grew to more than forty acres. Today it is the resting place of over 3,700 area residents.

Waxahachie, TX

Founded in 1887 as an elementary school for Black children, Oak Lawn moved to this site in 1893 and soon added high school classes. Early graduates Prince Goldthwaite and Robert Davis returned to serve as principals. The school grew through the twentieth century, splitting its elementary and high schools in 1952 and continuing until it closed in 1970.

Brenham, TX

In February 1839 the Rev. Hugh Wilson organized Prospect Presbyterian here on a Mexican-era land grant, making it the second Presbyterian church founded in Texas; the next year the young republic's first presbytery met in its log schoolhouse. A later pastor, James Weston Miller, founded the Live Oak Female Seminary in 1853, and the congregation began — but never finished — a grand stone sanctuary whose foundation stones still lie in the ground. The church disbanded in 1928, leaving Oak Rest Cemetery and those unused stones as its quiet witnesses.

Denison, TX

Asa Messenger, Sr. and his nephew William Lightfoot bought land in Grayson County in 1853, and by 1871 the Messenger family had settled for good in the area that became Oak Ridge. In 1881 Emma Messenger gave land for a school, and in 1882 for a community cemetery after her mother-in-law's death. Now holding more than 700 graves—including descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans reaching back to the Civil War—the cemetery has been tended by a dedicated association since 1951.

Cleveland, TX

Out of an 1857 meeting in a log schoolhouse, two Union Baptist Association missionaries helped organize the Oak Shade congregation on July 4 of that year, with Virginia-born Rev. Austin Ellis as first pastor. The church weathered decline, reorganization, and several buildings before a brick sanctuary was completed in 1951. Its cemetery holds Texas Revolution veteran Andrew Jackson Isaacks and victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic.

Cleveland, TX

Founded in 1845, the year Texas was annexed to the United States, Oak Shade Cemetery served the pioneer families settling the piney woods of Liberty County. Such burial grounds were often among the first permanent community institutions on the Texas frontier. It holds a Historic Texas Cemetery designation.

Corsicana, TX

Oak Valley was one of thirty school districts laid out in Navarro County in 1867, though classes waited until the 1870s, when a new state constitutional provision finally allowed taxes to fund public education. A one-room schoolhouse rose late that decade on land later deeded by the Garner family, and by 1919 nearly a hundred students filled a new two-room building. The school served the rural area for more than seventy years before the Corsicana district absorbed it in 1949.

Oakalla, TX

The first settlers reached this rich farm and ranch country in the 1850s, and by 1881 the community of Oakalla boasted a doctor, a drugstore, a blacksmith, and a cotton gin. Schooling began privately and moved into a cooperative building whose second floor doubled as a classroom, while worship was held in the schoolhouse and open-air brush arbors until the Baptist congregation raised its own meetinghouse in 1908. The school consolidated with Lampasas in 1958, and its building carried on as a community center.

Groesbeck, TX

Oakes Cemetery began with two burials in the early 1860s and stands on land later owned by John Collins Oakes and his wife Winnie, who migrated from Perry County, Alabama after the Civil War and prospered as farmers and landowners. Winnie formally set aside the graveyard in 1891, and generations of descendants have maintained and expanded it, even relocating the old Sanders Creek Church chapel here for funerals and an annual memorial service. Its curbed plots, obelisks, and inscribed stones reflect the region's pioneer families and their funerary customs.

Hemphill, TX

From the 1830s onward, pioneers spread across this Sabine County country in small farming settlements like Oakhill, where a Baptist church and its cemetery took root by the 1880s. Families scratched a living from subsistence farming supplemented by hauling timber to the Sabine River, until lumber companies stripped the forests by the 1930s and the communities faded. The graveyard was mistakenly folded into Sabine National Forest in 1935 — an error not corrected until 1966 — and later received reinterments displaced by the flooding for Toledo Bend Reservoir.

Oakhurst, TX

Settled by the 1830s, this East Texas site has held five successive houses of worship, beginning with a log cabin called Hibbetts Church. Because congregations of all faiths shared the early building, it became known as 'Union Center' and then 'Center Hill.' Russell Roark formally deeded the five-acre church and cemetery to the community in 1882, and a Baptist group later took up their care, sustained by an annual June homecoming begun in 1938.

Lynchburg, TX

A mile from this marker stood Oakland, home of David G. Burnet, who served as the first (interim) president of the Republic of Texas. Burnet brought his bride here in 1831 and, with their son William, wrested a living from the soil in the turbulent years surrounding Texas's fight for independence.

Crockett, TX

Named for its oak trees, Oakland was a loose rural settlement of scattered homes between the Trinity River and Crockett in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It never platted a townsite, but for a time it supported a church, a cotton gin, and a school. Among its early residents was Wilson E. Hail, later Houston County sheriff. By the 1930s the community was fading, though a few descendants of its settlers still live in the area.

Oakland, TX

Platted in 1856 as Prairie Point by Virginia-born Mexican War veteran A. C. Hereford, this became the second-oldest community in Colorado County, sitting on the original James Bowie land survey. When a post office was denied over its nearness to planter Amasa Turner's office, Turner agreed to move his—provided the town keep its name, Oakland. A stop on the Old Gonzales Road between San Felipe and Gonzales, Oakland thrived as a trade and social hub until the railroad bypassed it in the 1870s.

Roans Prairie, TX

Organized in 1854 in the Republic-era community of Roans Prairie, Oakland Baptist Church took as its first pastor George W. Baines—great-grandfather of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The congregation met in a schoolroom until building its own church in 1872, which was later moved to this site in 1913. Its early history traces the pattern of frontier Texas faith communities that gathered wherever a room could be found.

Sipe Springs, TX

Named for its abundant live oaks, the Oakland community took root in the early 1860s, and in 1875 circuit-riding Methodist minister H. S. 'Brother' Anglin arrived, building the local church while serving nine congregations nearby. The first burial came in 1891, and the Anglins deeded the church-and-cemetery land to trustees to serve Oakland and the neighboring communities. Now spanning five acres, the cemetery holds the graves of pioneer families and more than forty veterans of World Wars I and II, and it still serves the area today.

Grandview, TX

Oakland Cemetery took shape around 1866 in the Johnson County community of Grandview, in the uncertain years just after the Civil War as families were putting down permanent roots on the North Texas prairie. Recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2007, its grounds hold generations of the area's settlers.

Canton, TX

The oldest marked grave at Oakland belongs to Oscar Lee, born and dead on the same November day in 1882, and the community's story is written in the deeds that followed: a schoolhouse in 1885 that doubled as a Sunday church, a cemetery acre from M. M. Burks in 1887, and Methodist church land from Lizzie Currey McMahon in 1894. In its prime Oakland held churches, a school, and a cotton gin owned by John T. Currey, a four-term member of the Texas House. The dozens of family names on its stones — and Sabrina Reid, believed to be of American Indian descent — make the cemetery a running record of who lived and worked here.

Sulphur Springs, TX

After their Alabama church was burned during Reconstruction, Willis and Nannie Stewart sought a place to worship freely and moved to Hopkins County in 1882 with their seven children and two formerly enslaved people, Abraham and Chloe. Their evening singing and Bible study drew neighbors, and a circuit rider's 1883 baptism in the Stewart home grew into a congregation that met first in Oakland School and then, on land donated in 1896, in a meetinghouse the community built by hand. Rebuilt after a 1944 fire, Oakland Cumberland Presbyterian Church still serves the area.

Terrell, TX

When the railroad made Terrell a town in 1873, residents soon needed a burial ground, and in 1878 land was sold for a community cemetery. A perpetual-care association formed in 1925, and the name Oakland Memorial Park was adopted in 1931. Among those resting here are the noted artist Frank Reaugh and twenty British Royal Air Force cadets killed while training near Terrell during World War II.

Oakland, TX

Founded in 1882, the Oakland Normal School spent three decades training Black schoolteachers, meeting during spring and summer vacations so working teachers could attend. Its first principal was G. R. Townsend, but it was long led by Robert L. Smith, a respected educator and member of the Texas Legislature. Drawing students from seven southeast Texas counties, it was regarded as one of the finest institutions of its kind in the state.

Cooper, TX

The first burials in Cooper were made on a hill near Dr. J. A. Blackwell's home — reputedly beginning with the young daughter of Dr. R. C. Andrews — but the site soon proved unsuitable. In 1891 Asa White donated five acres for a new cemetery, and most of the old graves were moved here, including the community's oldest surviving monument to Mary Cumming, born in 1791. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows tended the grounds and added land until Oaklawn Cemetery was chartered in 1959.

Somerville, TX

This Burleson County cemetery began in 1900 when J. W. Lauderdale bought land to bury his two-year-old son, and was renamed Oaklawn in 1913. Among its more than two thousand graves are 22 Civil War veterans, a cluster of children who died in 1900–1905, and victims of a 1903 typhoid epidemic. When the Somerville dam was built in 1963, sixteen people were reinterred here from other graveyards.

Dallas, TX

The Rev. Marcus H. Cullum first preached in a grove along Turtle Creek before Oak Lawn settlers built a combined school and church house on donated land. There, in September 1874, he founded what became Oaklawn Methodist. A grander spired building followed in 1889, and the present structure rose between 1911 and 1915, growing alongside a congregation that swelled from twenty members to more than two thousand.

Oakville, TX

Named for the live oaks around it, Oakville served as the seat of Live Oak County from the county's creation in 1856 until 1919. For over sixty years it was the hub of government and commerce for this stretch of South Texas ranch country. When the county seat moved to railroad-served George West, Oakville faded into a quiet crossroads.

Oakville, TX

When Thomas Wilson donated this ground in 1857, the land had already passed through the hands of empire — it was originally part of the 1831 McMullen-McGloin colony granted under Mexico. As the young community of Oakville took shape, its cemetery became the resting place of the county's founding generation, including town founder J.T. James and the organizers of Live Oak County. The graves here read like a roll call of the pioneers who settled this stretch of South Texas.

Oakville, TX

Oakville grew up on land granted to Irish immigrants under the McMullen-McGloin Mexican colony, at a spot along the Nueces watershed once simply called "on the sulphur." When Live Oak County organized in 1856, Oakville became county seat, and its post office opened in 1857 with mail arriving by stagecoach on the San Antonio–Corpus Christi–Brownsville run. The town thrived until the railroad bypassed it in 1913 and the county seat moved away, though the post office still serves the community today.

Cisco, TX

Oakwood Cemetery in Cisco began by accident in 1883, when a family traveling to Fort Worth for lumber buried a stillborn son beneath an oak in their pasture. A cemetery association organized in 1899 fenced and beautified the grounds, and during the Depression the Works Progress Administration raised a 2,517-foot rock wall and a signature stone archway. Today more than 7,000 graves rest here, including over 600 veterans spanning the Civil War through Vietnam.

Austin, TX

Oakwood Cemetery took shape in 1839, the same moment Austin was being chosen as capital of the Republic of Texas, when the first burials were made on this hill. The land became city property in 1856, and over the decades the name shifted from City Cemetery to Austin City Cemetery to, in 1912, Oakwood. Beneath its oaks lie governors, cabinet members, mayors, and ordinary citizens, with two Jewish sections cared for by Temple Beth Israel since 1876.

Denton, TX

Oakwood Cemetery took shape soon after Denton was chosen as the county seat in 1857, on land donated by pioneer settler Hiram Cisco, who had also given ground for the townsite. Its earliest grave belongs to a Mrs. Wilson, who died in childbirth crossing the area by covered wagon. Among those resting here are town founder Jesse M. Blount and other early leaders—along with two men hanged for murder in 1879 whose stones simply read "Executed."

Jacksboro, TX

Oakwood Cemetery has served Jacksboro for well over a century, with graves dating to 1859 on land donated by old settlers between 1883 and 1904. In 1899 townspeople organized the Oakwood Cemetery Association—with Miss Alice Rogers as its first president—and secured a charter in 1908 to care for the grounds. An endowment begun in 1947 helped ensure the burial ground endured as a lasting record of the frontier community's founders.

Tyler, TX

Tyler's Oakwood Cemetery began in the 1840s as Lollar's Cemetery on land first used for burials before Texas was a decade into statehood. It holds a raised section of Confederate dead from the Civil War, a separate Jewish Beth-el Cemetery, and the graves of many leading citizens, including a Texas Supreme Court justice and Governor Richard B. Hubbard, who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan. WPA crews expanded and improved the grounds in the 1930s.

Huntsville, TX

Burials began here as early as 1846, and in 1847 Huntsville's founder Pleasant Gray deeded a plot that neighbors' donations steadily enlarged. Many stones bear the date 1867, when a yellow-fever epidemic swept Walker County. Among those who rest here are General Sam Houston, the towering figure of the Texas Revolution and Republic, and Henderson King Yoakum, author of the first comprehensive history of Texas.

Coldspring, TX

Set on land from the old Robert Rankin league, Oakwood Cemetery grew alongside the earliest days of San Jacinto County, with its first documented burial dating to 1853 and older, unmarked graves likely predating even that. Beneath its oaks lie the pioneers, children, officeholders, and veterans who built a corner of East Texas in the decades after statehood. A cemetery association chartered in 1979 keeps the ground and its stories.

Honey Grove, TX

Begun in 1846 as the Walcott Graveyard around the grave of Kentucky-born pioneer James G. Gilmer, this ground became a public cemetery when the Walcott family deeded it to the Honey Grove community. Beneath its oaks lie the town's founding families and more than 275 veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars, some memorialized because their bodies never came home. Members of the area's pre-Civil War enslaved community and later freed Black citizens are buried here as well.

Waco, TX

Before it became a cemetery in 1878, this Waco tract held a fairgrounds and a racetrack; afterward it grew into a 157-acre resting place that received reburials from the city's older graveyards. Uniquely, its association has long been governed by a board of directors made up entirely of women, as its founding by-laws required. Among those interred are three Texas governors, the pioneer for whom McLennan County is named, and a crusading editor shot dead in 1898 over his caustic pen.

Comanche, TX

When Texas redrew Comanche County in 1858 and moved its seat, land developer Captain John Duncan donated 200 acres in 1859 for a new townsite, setting aside ground for a graveyard, churches, and schools. Named Oakwood for its stand of oaks, the cemetery's earliest marked grave is a one-year-old boy who died in 1861, and it has since gathered pioneers, civic leaders, and veterans of every conflict from the Republic of Texas onward — including both Union and Confederate dead of the Civil War. The city has owned it as a community burying ground ever since.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth pioneer John Peter Smith — later a mayor, civic leader, and philanthropist — founded this cemetery in 1879 with a gift of 20 acres, since grown to 100. Bringing together the Oakwood, Calvary, and Trinity grounds, it holds many of the city's and county's notable dead, with plots held by lodges, unions, and churches, and separate tracts for Union and Confederate soldiers. Its chapel dates to 1914.

Joaquin, TX

This Shelby County burial ground was established in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, in the piney woods of deep East Texas. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2012.

Dallas, TX

On November 22, 1963, hours after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field. His longtime friend, U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes, administered it at 2:38 p.m., with Lady Bird Johnson at his side and a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy beside them. Johnson became the first Texan to hold the presidency.

Bertram, TX

This burial ground holds some of the earliest settlers of the Oatmeal community, with its oldest documented graves — a mother and her infant daughter — dating to 1854. Land was formally deeded for the cemetery in 1871, and it grew over the following century as an association took up its care. Among those laid to rest here are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.

Mission, TX

In 1916 the young city of Mission, deep in the Rio Grande Valley, secured a long-term lease to turn land into a public park, naming it for the Missionary Oblate Fathers—the Catholic society whose earlier land sale had made the townsite possible. For decades the grounds hummed with band concerts, Memorial Day observances, and Fourth of July celebrations. As the heart of an early residential addition, the park became the social anchor of a fast-growing border town.

Perryton, TX

When Jim McLarty and J. V. Stump fenced ninety acres for a cemetery in the town of Ochiltree in 1902, McLarty himself became its first occupant, killed at twenty-one in a fall from his horse. The county took the deed in 1927 and an association formed in 1930, and during the Depression the Works Progress Administration built its entry gate. Its graves hold veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Perryton, TX

Ochiltree County, in the Texas Panhandle, was carved from Young and Bexar territories, created in 1876 and formally organized in 1889. It honors William Beck Ochiltree (1811–1867), a Texas Supreme Court justice, treasury secretary, and the last attorney general of the Republic of Texas who later served in the legislature, backed secession in 1861, and became a Confederate colonel. The county seat moved from Ochiltree to Perryton in 1920.

Perryton, TX

Ochiltree County was created in 1876 and named for Texas jurist William Beck Ochiltree, but settlers only began digging dugouts near Wolf Creek in 1886, organizing the county in 1889 with their village as county seat. A two-story courthouse of Dodge City lumber rose in 1891 and doubled as church, school, and social hall; by 1903 the town of Ochiltree had 600 people, a bank, flour mill, and newspaper. When the Santa Fe Railway founded Perryton 8 miles north in 1919, the railroad lured residents with free lots and whole buildings were hauled to the new site.

Temple, TX

Czech immigrant families of the Unity of the Brethren faith settled the farming community of Ocker in eastern Bell County in the late 1870s, worshipping in their homes until traveling Czech preachers helped them organize in 1892. They raised their first church the next year, and the congregation grew steadily as Czech gradually gave way to English by the 1940s.