Westward Expansion

Liberty, TX

Cornelius De Vore, born in New Orleans in 1819, was a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto — the decisive 1836 clash in which Sam Houston's small army routed Santa Anna and secured Texas independence. Men like De Vore, many of them young and newly arrived, made up the citizen force that fought in that brief but pivotal campaign. His grave in Liberty County honors one of the founding generation of the Republic of Texas.

Frankfort, KY

This leafy quarter of old Frankfort earned its nickname from the astonishing concentration of national figures who once lived within a few blocks—among them Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan, statesman John J. Crittenden, senators John and James Brown, several Kentucky governors, and admiral Hugh Rodman. Over a century and more, judges, senators, diplomats, and military leaders called this small neighborhood home. Few street corners in America have sent so many of their residents into the nation's highest offices.

Hughes Springs, TX

Burials began at this Cass County site in the 1850s, though the oldest legible stone marks the 1880 grave of Mary Frances Hampton. Robert Dunlap gave nine acres for the cemetery and the adjacent Hamell's Chapel Methodist Church, with other families donating land as well. Known by several names, it was renamed 'Cornett' after the Cornett Post Office opened in 1901 and now holds roughly 295 marked and 110 unmarked graves.

Houston County, TX

Corinth Cemetery is the last physical trace of several vanished Houston County settlements, among them Corinth, a community that gathered in the late 1850s around a Methodist church and school. The graveyard became the final resting place for residents of Corinth, Old Randolph, Old Zion, Kennard, and Center Hill, with its oldest documented grave dating to 1864. The Corinth Cemetery Association has tended the grounds since the 1940s.

Lubbock, TX

Opened in 1965, Coronado High School takes its name from Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, the Spanish conquistador who in 1541 crossed the Llano Estacado in search of the fabled golden city of Quivira. Guided by a Plains Indian the Spanish called "The Turk," Coronado's expedition wandered for days through West Texas, perhaps passing near present-day Lubbock. The school's name ties a modern city to the first Europeans to traverse its high plains.

Floydada, TX

Between 1540 and 1542, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led a vast expedition—more than a thousand people and thousands of animals—north from Mexico chasing rumors of golden cities. Their exact path across the southern plains has long puzzled historians, since surviving accounts are brief and contradictory. In the spring of 1541 the company camped in a wide canyon, and chain mail, crossbow points, and other European artifacts later unearthed around Blanco Canyon helped archaeologists confirm that Coronado passed this way.

Corsicana, TX

When the Texas Legislature created Navarro County in 1846, a committee chose this 100-acre tract for the county seat, naming it Corsicana for the Corsican homeland of patriot José Antonio Navarro's parents. Early settler Hampton McKinney's log cabin doubled as school, post office, courthouse, and tavern. The railroad's arrival in 1871 sparked explosive growth, and by the late 1800s Corsicana was a pioneer of commercial oil and natural-gas fuel.

Weslaco, TX

Weslaco was barely a decade old when city leaders hired San Antonio architect Paul G. Silber to raise a hotel on a block once deeded as a park. Opening on the last night of 1928, the four-story Spanish Colonial Revival Cortez Hotel became the social heart of the Rio Grande Valley boomtown—home to dance clubs, service organizations, graduations, and political rallies alike. Through decades of changing ownership it remained a symbol of the civic pride that built the Valley.

Corydon, IN

When the capital of Indiana Territory moved from Vincennes to Corydon in 1813, this sturdy limestone building rose at the center of frontier government. In 1816 it became the first State Capitol of newly admitted Indiana, housing the young state's officials until the seat of government shifted to the new city of Indianapolis in 1825. Preserved today as a state historic site, it anchors the town where Indiana's statehood began.

Oglesby, TX

Recognized as Coryell County's first Baptist church, this congregation was gathered by two elders in the mid-1800s, with a roster of charter families whose names still dot the county. For years the members met in homes and a schoolhouse before raising a permanent building on land donated by two of their own. When the historic church was finally dismantled in 1982, its lumber was reused to repair the local tabernacle — a fitting second life for a pioneer sanctuary.

Gatesville, TX

Coryell County was carved from Bell County in 1854 and named for James Coryell, a Tennessee-born frontiersman whose short life packed in a search for the fabled San Saba silver mines and service as a Texas Ranger. Coryell was killed by Native raiders near Fort Milam in 1837, during the perilous era of the Republic of Texas. The county seat began at Fort Gates before settling permanently at Gatesville.

Gatesville, TX

Rising from the Gatesville square in 1897, the third Coryell County Courthouse is a flamboyant example of the Second Empire Victorian style that architect W. C. Dodson brought to many Texas county seats. Its limestone and red sandstone blocks were cut to size at the quarry and hauled in by horse-drawn wagon, then dressed with Roman Corinthian columns, roof statuary representing Justice, and a builder's owl over the east entrance. For more than a century it has anchored county government and hosted its share of notable trials.

Celina, TX

Local tradition traces this Methodist congregation to pioneer prayer gatherings in the Culwell family home around 1846 and to camp meetings at nearby Honey Creek soon after. A church was built on donated land in 1881, and the adjoining cemetery — begun as a family burial ground around the 1870 grave of Martha Culwell — grew into a community resting place dense with early settlers' headstones. The congregation still worships in a structure renovated in 1946.

Miami, TX

Widowed in 1893, Lizzie Lard built the Cottage Hotel with her prominent family's help and opened it in 1895 to support her two daughters — a woman making her own way on the Texas Panhandle frontier. As Miami became the county seat and a regional trade hub, the hotel thrived, its parlor a favorite meeting spot for businessmen and young people alike. Through a string of owners and names it operated for decades, and after a stretch as a private residence it was restored in the early 1990s to serve once more as an inn.

Paducah, TX

Cottle County, created in 1876 and organized in 1892 along the breaks of the Pease and Little Wichita rivers, honors George Washington Cottle, a DeWitt's Colony settler who fought at Gonzales and died defending the Alamo in March 1836. The marker frames his sacrifice within the broader story of how Texas named its 254 counties—the great majority for revolutionaries, statesmen, and Confederate figures. Cottle was one of fifteen Alamo defenders so remembered.

Paducah, TX

Carved from the vast Young and Bexar land districts as the Texas frontier pushed westward, Cottle County was created in 1876 and finally organized in 1892 with Paducah as its seat. Its name honors George Washington Cottle, one of the defenders who died at the Alamo in 1836, tying this dusty Panhandle-fringe county to Texas's founding sacrifice.

Paducah, TX

Cottle County was created in 1876 and named for George Washington Cottle, who died at the Alamo, though settlers did not organize it until 1892, choosing a central townsite they named Paducah after one settler's Kentucky home. After two earlier courthouses, the county broke ground in 1929 on a striking four-story Art Deco building by the firm of Voelcker and Dixon. Its stepped masses, carved eagles, and figures of justice and liberty have drawn comparisons to an Egyptian temple.

Paradise, TX

Cottondale is remembered as one of the earliest settlements in Wise County, platted in 1875 by landowner B. F. Banks, who set aside lots for public use. Its name came from cotton planted by blacksmith John Bridges — famously to raise money for a trip to Alabama to bring home his bride. As the nearby town of Paradise grew, it absorbed Cottondale's post office and school.

Dublin, TX

In the small farming community of Cottonwood outside Dublin, settlers organized the Cottonwood Missionary Baptist Church in 1908, with forty-six charter members and Reverend Lee Gilbreath as first pastor. In its early years the whole community shared one building, with Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, and Presbyterian ministers each preaching once a month. When the school consolidated with Dublin's in 1928 and families moved away, six teenaged girls kept the congregation alive by meeting faithfully every Sunday. Their persistence carried the church to a new building in 1959 and beyond.

Hubbard, TX

This cemetery grew from land granted to Parrott W. McNeese for his service in the Texas Revolution, whose son George deeded acreage for a school and graveyard after an infant son died in 1873. Around it flourished the Cottonwood community—a store, cotton gin, and school peopled partly by German families brought from Brenham in 1882. The burial ground holds veterans from the Texas Revolution to the Korean War, including a husband-and-wife pair who both served in World War II.

Dublin, TX

On the banks of Cottonwood Creek just outside Dublin lies a cemetery born of a cotton-farming settlement founded in 1854 by Alexander H. and Sarah Holland Dobkins. James C. Bellamy donated land in 1857 for a school and public burial ground, and the graveyard's story is threaded with the dangers of the frontier—two people killed in a Comanche attack were reburied here decades later when railroad work forced the move. Shaded by post oak and pecan, it holds veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam. The cemetery and the Cottonwood Baptist Church are all that remain of the community.

Eustace vicinity, TX

Permanent settlement of the Cottonwood community began in the 1840s and 50s, as families like the Stirmans, Greens, and Grahams raised a church, school, stores, and a cotton gin. The burial ground began in 1871 when Shadrach Green interred his son-in-law, and under later owner William Hugh Graham—a state legislator—it served the community before his heirs deeded it outright in the 1920s. Veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam rest here, and descendants have gathered yearly since the 1930s to clean and remember.

Scurry, TX

Cottonwood Cemetery was established in 1882 on land donated by settler J. W. Swayze for a church, school, and burial ground. The first grave was that of the donor's brother, J. R. Swayze, who died that same year. Enlarged over time to five acres with land given by later families, the grounds are still tended by descendants and neighbors and shared among nearby communities.

Matador, TX

Named for the mott of cottonwoods shading a natural spring, this spot served as a cowboy line camp as early as 1878, a rough outpost from which hands worked cattle and mended fences and where a log cabin saw at least two gunfights. In 1882 the surrounding range was bought by the Matador Land & Cattle Company, a Scotland-based syndicate that ran the country until selling out in 1951, after which the land was broken into smaller ranches. The marker was placed for the Texas Sesquicentennial.

Cotulla, TX

When Joseph Cotulla gave land for a burial ground in his young namesake town, he created a record in stone of South Texas frontier life. The oldest marked grave dates to 1882, and a cluster from 1886 memorializes the year smallpox swept La Salle County. Originally divided into Mexican and Anglo-American sections, the cemetery holds many early community leaders and has been tended by an association since 1915.

Cotulla, TX

Polish immigrant Joseph Cotulla came to present-day La Salle County in 1865, and when the town that bears his name was founded in 1882 he donated land for both the courthouse and this city park. In its early years the park served as a campsite for travelers and ranchers, then gained a bandstand at the turn of the century for concerts and lectures, and a miniature golf course and playground in the 1930s. It has remained a gathering place at the heart of community life ever since.

Cotulla, TX

Joseph Cotulla left Poland as a boy in 1856, crossing to America by ship and oxcart and settling into the ranching country of South Texas, where he registered his own brand in 1863. He served two years in the First Texas Cavalry of the Union Army during the Civil War, then drove cattle to Kansas and steadily built a ranch that grew to more than 30,000 acres across three counties. In 1881 he donated land to the railroad for a townsite that took his name and became the seat of La Salle County.

Pleasanton, TX

Founded on land bought in 1901 and named for settler W.A. "Abe" Coughran, this Atascosa County town owed its life to the railroad Coughran lured through his property. Platted in 1913, it soon boasted a cotton gin, bank, hotel, newspaper, creamery, and depot, thriving until about 1918. Decline set in during the 1920s and again after World War II, and when rail and postal service ended in 1945 and the school closed in 1956, Coughran faded.

Winters, TX

Counts Cemetery grew from the rural community once known as "Content" on the West Texas frontier, its earliest recorded burial a child laid to rest in 1880. In 1884 more than a dozen local men purchased four acres for a public burial ground, later named for R. F. Counts, whose family owned the surrounding land, with more acreage added in the 1930s. Among those interred are an unknown number of Confederate Civil War veterans who had come west to build new lives in Runnels County.

Fredericksburg, TX

This two-story stone building was the fourth jail of Gillespie County, which had been organized back in 1848, and was raised in 1885 by the firm of C. F. Priess and Bro. The ground floor held a booking area and the jailer's living quarters, while the upper floor kept steel-clad and maximum-security cells. It locked up the county's prisoners until 1939.

Harleton, TX

In the years around the Civil War, settlers drawn from North Carolina, Mississippi, and Georgia gathered near the Harrison–Upshur county line to form the Crossroads community, founding a Baptist church and this cemetery on land given by Dr. T.B. Burford. The earliest marked grave belongs to Eli Henderson McCoy, who came from North Carolina in 1859, served in the Confederate Army, and died in 1863. Tombstones bearing military and fraternal emblems—and two rare stone cairns—record the lives of the families who built the settlement.

Shallowater, TX

Beginning in 1901, farming families like the Murrays, Pettits, and Hardys settled this stretch of the South Plains, hauling lumber from the nearest railhead to build a school that doubled as church and community center. Named for its perch on the Lubbock–Hale county line, the settlement gained cotton gins, stores, and social clubs, and after the 1945 discovery of a nearby oil field, petroleum joined farming in its economy. The school consolidated with Abernathy in 1940, and though the community carried on for another fifty years, only the church and cemetery remain today.

Wills Point, TX

A surveyor's error in 1850 placed Van Zandt County's seat on private land, and by 1877 discontent boiled over into a full-blown "county seat war." When Judge Cadwell Walton Raines ordered the records moved from Canton to Wills Point, some 200 armed men marched in protest, and Governor R. B. Hubbard had to send militia to keep the peace. Bloodshed was averted, the records went back to Canton in 1878, and the seat stayed there for good.

Snyder, TX

When Scurry County organized in 1884, W. W. 'Uncle Billy' Nelson became its first sheriff and authorized a tiny 8-by-10-foot frame 'calaboose' for a jail — but he resigned after six months, worn down by unruly cowboys. His successor, T. J. Faught, won the cowhands' respect by quieting a rowdy saloon crowd with a wooden pool cue and, though he never wore a gun, served three terms from 1886 to 1892. A street in the original Snyder town plat was named for him, now 27th Street.

Ft. Stockton, TX

In far West Texas, this native-sandstone courthouse and jail went up in 1883 to bring law and administration to Pecos County. Close by stands the Zero Stone, set in 1859 as the first reference point for local land surveys. Together they mark how order was measured and enforced across the vast, arid frontier.

Brownwood, TX

Brown County was created in 1856 and has been served by four courthouses in succession—beginning with a donated log cabin that was physically moved twice as the county seat shifted, once to settle an 1868 townsite dispute. A combined courthouse and jail built in 1876 burned after only four years, and a Waco firm designed its 1884 replacement. The current Classical Revival courthouse, raised in 1917–18, folded in interior walls and vaults salvaged from the earlier building.

Sherman, TX

Since Grayson County's founding in 1846, its seat of justice has taken every shape from a $232 frame building on bald prairie to a native limestone landmark. Five courthouses came and went in the county's first forty years before the railroad reached Sherman in 1873, bringing better materials and a majestic 1876 courthouse crowned with a clock-and-bell tower. That building burned in 1930, and the Depression delayed its limestone successor until 1936.

Kountze, TX

Since Hardin County was created in 1858, its seat of government has occupied a succession of buildings, beginning with a two-story log structure that burned around 1886 and took the county's early records with it. A frame courthouse followed in 1887—famously built around its safe—then a domed 1905 masonry building of West Texas stone and imported St. Louis brick, and finally a modern facility in 1958. Remarkably, the little 1887 building still stands near the square as law offices.

Palo Pinto, TX

Created in 1856, Palo Pinto County laid out its seat at the geographic center and built a modest $300 wood-frame courthouse the following year, in a town first called Golconda and soon renamed Palo Pinto. A grand sandstone courthouse with a Second Empire clock tower rose in 1882, quarried from local stone and later joined to an annex by an iron bridge. In 1940–1942 those buildings gave way to a WPA-built reinforced-concrete courthouse clad in some of the old sandstone.

San Patricio, TX

Since the 1830s, eight buildings have served as the seat of government for San Patricio County, beginning with a 'Log Courthouse' raised for the San Patricio colony before the county itself was created in 1837. A stone courthouse begun before the Civil War was never finished—neighbors even carried off its stones for their chimneys—and later courthouses came and went by fire and by the 1894 move of the county seat to Sinton. In 1986 a replica of the 1872 courthouse was built on its original site from the old commissioners' specifications.

Navasota, TX

Laid out beside the 1873 townsite of McAlpine Town, this cemetery was established by developer Dugald McAlpine, a Scottish-born settler who helped shape the young community of Courtney. Its oldest documented grave dates to 1873, though older unmarked burials likely predate it. Among those resting here are community founders, descendants of early settlers, and veterans reaching from the Civil War through the Korean War.

Athens, TX

When Henderson County set its permanent boundaries in 1850, voters chose Matthew Cartwright's land for the new county seat of Athens, and this square was set aside as public ground. Before any courthouse rose, judges heard cases—murder, larceny, gambling, assault—beneath a large shady oak on this spot. The first district court term in October 1850 was presided over by Oran M. Roberts, later a Texas Supreme Court justice and governor.

Cove, TX

In 1824, during the era of Mexican colonization, Joseph Lawrence of New York—reputed to have sailed with Jean Lafitte's privateers—settled on a marshland ridge that became the seed of this community. A.B.J. Winfree arrived from Louisiana in 1827 on a land grant, and the settlement around his property came to be called Winfree's Cove, later shortened to Cove. Built first on cattle and later on farming, fishing, and fur trapping, the community incorporated in 1973 to preserve its independence.

Melrose, TX

Named for three spring-fed coves nearby, this East Texas cemetery grew out of a local Methodist congregation after Daniel H. Vail deeded 30 acres for church and school in 1858. The oldest marked grave belongs to five-year-old Moses J. Davis, buried in 1866, though rough native-rock markers may hide older burials. Today the grounds hold 66 marked graves and still serve the surrounding community as a place of rest.

Covington, TX

Covington Cemetery grew alongside the plantations of brothers James and Philip Gathings, who moved from Mississippi in the early 1850s with their families and enslaved workers and amassed thousands of acres on the Blackland Prairie. James platted the town of Covington and, with his brother, donated land for a church and the Gathings Male and Female College. The earliest marked grave is a son-in-law killed at the Battle of Yellow Bayou in 1864, whose body James had brought home for reburial.

Hondo, TX

In January 1866 the Texas Hill Country was still contested ground between settlers and Native Americans resisting the loss of their hunting grounds. Three young men from near D'Hanis — August Rothe, George Miller, and twelve-year-old Hubert Weynand — camped on Hondo Creek to gather stray livestock when they were attacked. Miller was killed, Weynand was captured and never seen again, and Rothe escaped to tell the story, later recorded by frontier chronicler A.J. Sowell.

Dublin, TX

In 1871 Jesse Van donated land for a community cemetery serving the Cow Creek settlement, which supported a school and two churches. Its most notable burial was William Carroll Crawford, the last surviving signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, whose remains the state reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin in 1936. Among some sixty-five unidentified graves, the earliest recorded burial dates to 1874.

Brady, TX

Legend gives this burial ground its name from a cowboy who died passing through and may have been its first grave, but the record begins with four-year-old William Hughes in 1882. His parents, W.G.S. and Sarah Hughes, donated the land — and an additional acre for a school — that year, with Sarah and family deeding nearly five more acres to a cemetery association in 1932. The grounds preserve the heritage of the Deep Creek community on the Central Texas frontier.

Anson, TX

In 1885 a dance for cowboys and ladies at the Star Hotel in Anson so inspired visiting writer Larry Chittenden that he penned "The Cowboys' Christmas Ball," a poem naming real people and ranches of 1880s Jones County. Revived in the 1930s, the tradition drew national fame, even reaching the White House lawn, and settled into Pioneer Hall built with WPA help. Held every year with grand marches, waltzes, and period dress, it keeps a piece of frontier Texas alive.

Dallas, TX

Cox Cemetery holds more than 400 marked graves and perhaps 100 unmarked burials, its oldest stone from 1848 marking a two-month-old child. Absalom Humbard, who came to Texas after being wounded and imprisoned during the Civil War, permanently set the ground aside for burials near White Rock Lake, where it served pioneer families—Glovers, Lavenders, Coxes, Donagheys and others who had arrived from across the United States and from Germany. It also served the vanished railroad communities of Fisher (later Calhoun) and Reinhardt before they were absorbed into Dallas.

Canton, TX

Robert K. Gibbs and his family settled this Van Zandt County land in the early 1850s, and the earliest documented grave — an infant Gibbs daughter — dates to 1853. When Robert Daniel Cox acquired the property in 1880, he opened the small family plot as a community cemetery, which grew through later land additions. Some of the unmarked graves are believed to hold enslaved people, and five generations of the Cox family rest here.

Sidney vicinity, TX

William Driscol Cox brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and settled a 300-acre ranch here, teaching the first school in nearby Sidney and serving as Comanche County sheriff. The cemetery began with the 1876 burial of his infant daughter Mary Jane, and in 1886 Cox donated the ground to a Methodist mission as a public burial place. Generations of the Cox family and their kin have tended it ever since.

Groesbeck, TX

Arkansas native Obediah Cox came home from the Civil War in 1864 and settled with his wife Angeline in the Ferguson Prairie community of Limestone County. When Angeline died in 1870 he buried her here, the cemetery's earliest marked grave, later marrying her sister Eliza and adding to the family lands. The burial ground grew to hold Civil War veterans, Masons, and members of the Order of the Eastern Star among the Cox, Glover, Yarbrough, and other pioneer families, and since the 1880s their descendants have gathered here each year for a memorial reunion.

Needmore, TX

On the vast, dry expanse of the Staked Plains, this brackish salt lake was a rare and welcome source of water for Comanche bands, buffalo hunters, and cattle drives alike. Artifacts along its shore mark it as a favored Comanche camp, and after the 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls broke Comanche resistance, hide hunters swept the region and all but exterminated the southern buffalo herd. From the 1880s the lake watered stock on the immense XIT Ranch and, later, cattle bound for the railroad at Bovina and the markets to the north.

Jacksonville, TX

Founded in 1891 at the Shiloh Schoolhouse by members of a nearby Baptist congregation, this East Texas church cycled through several names before settling on Craft Baptist Church of Christ in 1899. For decades its members met only once or twice a month — a rhythm dictated by the hard task of keeping full-time pastors in rural communities — before expanding to weekly worship in the 1950s. Unusually tied to education, the church hosted preaching students from nearby Jacksonville College and sent its own pastors into seminaries, mission fields, and denominational leadership.

Crane, TX

Carved from Tom Green County in 1887 and formally organized in 1927, Crane County honors William Carey Crane, a Baptist minister who served as president of Baylor University from 1863 to 1885. The long gap between creation and organization reflects how sparsely settled far West Texas remained until the oil era. The county seat, Crane, carries his name as well.

Conroe, TX

Nickolas Crane came to Texas from Alabama in 1848 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, built this large cabin in 1867 on his land claim, hand-adzing split pine logs smooth on the interior and topping it with a cypress-board roof. The Tharp family moved and restored the cabin in the 1970s, preserving a rare example of post-war frontier homebuilding.

Crawford, TX

Crawford took root in the 1850s near Tonk Crossing, in country the Tonkawa had long ranged, at the meeting of two frontier trade routes. When the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad bypassed the original townsite in 1881, residents simply picked up and moved to the new line, and the relocated town flourished with churches, a cotton gin, and a grain mill before incorporating in 1897. For most of the twentieth century it was a quiet agricultural center—until 1999, when George W. Bush bought a nearby ranch that his 2000 election turned into the "Western White House."

Crawford, TX

Crawford Cemetery began with grief: a chiseled rockpile reading "H. Kee" marks the 1876 grave of an infant boy whose family had newly settled the area. Neighbor Uriah Tadlock, a Civil War veteran who bought land along the Tonk Creek Road cattle trail in 1870, offered a pasture for the burial and set aside three acres as a community cemetery, tradition holding that no one was ever to pay for a resting place. Tadlock and his wife Mary Ann helped build early Crawford—houses, the Methodist church, and a school—and are buried here among the pioneers who developed this corner of McLennan County.

Meadville, PA · est. 1982

Formed from Allegheny County in 1800 and named for Colonel William Crawford, Crawford County grew up around Meadville, which in 1788 became the first permanent settlement in northwestern Pennsylvania. The county proved a seedbed of American firsts: the nation's first direct primary election was held here in 1842, and it became a cradle of both the oil industry and the modern zipper. Meadville anchored settlement in a corner of the state that was still wild frontier when the town was founded.