Westward Expansion

Dallas, TX

Millermore is one of Dallas County's grandest surviving antebellum plantation houses. William Brown Miller brought his family from Missouri to the Texas frontier in 1847 and raised this Greek Revival home on his farm east of Dallas between 1855 and 1862. His daughter Minera inherited and named the place, and it passed down through a family that included a Texas lieutenant governor and an author; rescued from demolition, the house was dismantled in 1966 and rebuilt at its present site.

Stephenville vicinity, TX

Henry and Lourilla Miller, Missouri immigrants who came to Texas in the 1860s, bought land here about 1876 and sold it off as small farms, seeding the community of Millerville. Settlers organized a Church of Christ and a school, and by the early 1900s a store, church, and Birdsell School formed the town's heart. The village is gone now, and this cemetery—with its earliest recorded burial in 1877—is its last physical trace.

Lewisville, TX

William Dickerson Milliken, a Kentucky-born merchant, opened a store in Lewisville in 1877 and the following year built this frame house of native oak. The siding tells its own story of a pre-railroad economy: it was freighted overland from Jefferson, the busy riverport of East Texas. Home to Milliken, his wife Margaret, and their eight children, the house earned Recorded Texas Historic Landmark status in 1969.

Garland, TX

Edward C. Mills and his family were among the first settlers of eastern Dallas County, claiming a Peters Colony headright on Rowlett's Creek in 1847. The cemetery began in 1854 with the burial of Mills's second wife and grew over the years from a small family plot into a community burial ground. It holds Peters colonists, generations of the Mills family, and war veterans, and still serves the Garland and Rowlett communities.

Goldthwaite, TX

Mills County was carved from four neighboring counties—Brown, Comanche, Hamilton, and Lampasas—and created on March 15, 1887, organizing that August with Goldthwaite as its seat. It was named for John T. Mills, a judge of the Third and Seventh Judicial Districts back in the days of the Republic of Texas. The marker records the county's founding facts.

Goldthwaite, TX

After Mills County was organized in 1887 and Goldthwaite named county seat, an Oscar Ruffini-designed courthouse served from 1890 until fire destroyed it in 1912. The county then hired San Antonio architect Henry T. Phelps, whose 1913 three-story Classical Revival building — with its central pediment and fluted engaged columns — still anchors the town square.

Goldthwaite, TX

Built in 1888, the Mills County Jail was the very first structure erected by the newly organized county—raised even before a county seat had been chosen. In frontier Texas, a secure jail was often the first order of business for a young county government asserting law and order across a sparsely settled land.

Millsap, TX

Methodists were worshiping here in 1875, five years before the town of Millsap even had a name, meeting first in a small church on donated land. The congregation raised its present building in 1924, laid out in the cruciform shape of a cross after early Christian tradition, and later added stained glass depicting the twelve disciples. For well over a century it has served as a steady gathering place for this small Parker County community.

Henderson, TX

In the 1840s Jesse Walling, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, set aside four acres for a church, school, Masonic lodge, and cemetery to serve the Liberty Hill community, later renamed Millville. Of the nearly 400 graves—many unmarked—Ann Rushing's, dated 1851, is the earliest marked, and several are covered with distinctive carved fieldstone slabs that give the ground a singular look. Descendants still gather for the annual Millville picnic, a tradition reaching back to at least 1885.

Collin County, TX

Millwood took its name from a lumber mill set up nearby around 1846, and by the early 1850s the town had a post office, businesses, and lumber, grist, and flour mills. Local tradition dates the cemetery to 1854 and the death of Nancy Bulloch — wife of James W. Bulloch, a veteran of the Battle of Nacogdoches — though the first recorded burial came in 1864. The town prospered until the early 1900s, and today the cemetery is all that remains of Millwood.

Silverton, TX

The Milo community grew up in the late 1800s on the prairie between Palo Duro and Tule canyons, with a store, post office, school, and scattered family dugouts, taking its name from the favored area crop. When John Alexander Cope died in 1892 his family donated two acres for a cemetery, where granite and sandstone markers still honor pioneers, fraternal lodge members, and two Civil War veterans—now the only trace of the vanished settlement.

Liberty, TX

Milton Ashley Hardin came to the Texas frontier as a boy in 1826 and, in 1835, fought at the Battle of Concepcion and the Siege of Bexar during the struggle for Texas independence, earning a land grant. He later sold the tract that became the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation before moving on to North Central Texas.

Shafter, TX

Milton Faver — known in the borderlands as Don Meliton — parlayed a Chihuahua Trail freighting business and a Presidio del Norte store into the first great cattle empire west of the Pecos. Around 1857 he moved his family and vaqueros to the mountain country north of Presidio, fortifying his headquarters at El Fortin del Cibolo and adding ranches at La Cienega and La Morita, all watered by abundant springs. He engineered irrigation for grain, vegetables, and peach orchards, supplied the Army at Fort Davis, and lived, by all accounts, as a hospitable gentleman of means until his death in 1889.

Shafter, TX

By the 1880s Milton Faver, who had come to the Presidio country from a store and freighting business at Presidio del Norte, controlled vast reaches of the county — including most of its best permanent springs. His three fortified ranches, El Fortin del Cibolo, El Fortin de la Cienega, and La Morita, made up the largest single landholding around, worked with adobe and stone buildings, corrals, and irrigation systems and stocked with the county's biggest herds. After Faver and his family died, the lands were sold off in the wake of a lawsuit, and later ranching families — the Dawsons, Pools, and Greenwoods — worked the former Faver range into the late twentieth century.

Center, TX

Born in Maine in 1812, Milton Irish came to East Texas at 23 and threw himself into the fight for Texas independence. He served in the Siege of Bexar under Ben Milam and stood with Colonel Fannin's command at Coleto Creek, was taken prisoner at Goliad, and barely escaped the massacre that killed hundreds of his comrades. Rewarded with land grants, he later left to seek gold in California, where he is believed to have died in 1869, while his widow Emily held the Shelby County homestead.

Jefferson, TX

Pioneer settlers organized this Methodist congregation before the Civil War, first gathering at a log 'Rock Church' named for a large stone where early meetings were held. It was later renamed Mims Chapel to honor brothers John W. and Henry Mims, who helped secure the site. Graves in the adjoining cemetery reach back to the 1870s and include prominent early community leaders, and a schoolhouse stood here until about 1906.

Bastrop, TX

This home stands on land granted in 1835 to Greenlief Fisk, Bastrop County's first district clerk, and was built in 1836–37 in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas. It later became home to Jesse Holderman and Campbell Taylor, two veterans of the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas independence. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.

Silverton, TX

Arkansas-born Miner Crawford became Briscoe County's first sheriff when it organized in 1892, later serving additional terms in 1913–1914 and 1921–1922. His first official act was arresting two horse thieves from New Mexico, and in his last term he and two deputies won a gun battle and seized a moonshine still. Remembered as bringing law and order while "bearing the stamp of a gentleman," he died in 1928.

Mineral County, NV

Walker Lake appears on Nevada's earliest maps, and this corner of the Great Basin drew a parade of famous explorers: Jedediah Smith passed near here in 1828, Peter Skene Ogden in 1829, and John C. Frémont arrived in 1845 with guide Joseph Walker, the lake's namesake. Carved from Esmeralda County in 1911, Mineral County restored Hawthorne to prominence as a government seat. Its landscape is dotted with storied mining towns like Aurora, Candelaria, and Rawhide.

Glen Rose, TX

Founded in 1886 by Elder Wilson Hufner and W. L. Rogers in the community of Post Oak, this Primitive Baptist congregation joined with fifteen neighboring churches in 1899 to form the Duffau Association, the largest of its kind in Texas. Its meeting house was relocated to this site around 1920, and in the mid-1950s the grounds became home to a summer youth camp. The present sanctuary was moved here in 1960.

Mineral Wells, TX

Mineral Wells was, as its marker says, 'a town built on water.' Founded in 1877 by settler J. A. Lynch, who claimed a near-miraculous recovery from rheumatism after drinking the foul-tasting well water, it boomed as hundreds flocked to 'take the waters.' Its 'Crazy Water' slogan sprang from a reputed cure at the 'crazy woman well,' and for years the town reigned as Texas' leading health spa—its curative reputation resting largely on dissolved mineral salts.

Union Township, PA · est. 1994

This ground has been called the cradle of the Whiskey Rebellion. In the 1790s a log Presbyterian meetinghouse stood near the present church, and after the Mingo Creek Society formed in February 1794 it became the organizing heart of resistance to the federal whiskey tax. Society members mustered as militia on these very grounds; some now rest in the churchyard nearby.

Mingus, TX

This congregation traces its roots to 1891, when area Baptists organized as Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church, named for the rural schoolhouse where they first met. Renamed Mingus Baptist Church in 1900, the fellowship received this land in 1905 and has worshipped here continuously since 1906. In the growing communities of Palo Pinto County, it became a steady center of religious life.

Kansas City, MO

The swales at Minor Park are rare surviving ruts worn into the earth by wagons on the Santa Fe Trail, the great commercial road that ran from Missouri to New Mexico beginning in 1821. Wagon trains crossing the Blue River here left depressions still visible in the ground today, now protected on the National Register of Historic Places. Few traces of the overland trails endure so plainly.

Grapevine, TX

Not long after lay minister Green W. Minter settled here around 1854, he helped organize Minter's Chapel Methodist Church, and his son-in-law James Cate set aside 4.1 acres for a church and burial ground. The earliest marked grave dates to 1857, and the many small headstones speak to how often frontier families buried their children. A log meetinghouse gave way to a frame church in 1882, and in 1967 the growing Dallas-Fort Worth airport absorbed all but this small cemetery.

Grapevine, TX

About 1854 four pioneer families organized this Methodist congregation, meeting first in a log cabin on land James Cate donated for a church, school, and cemetery. They named the fellowship for the Rev. Green Washington Minter, whose leadership guided its founding and early growth, and through hardship the church became a focal point of the community. In 1967 it was moved to this spot when its original site fell within the boundaries of the new Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Rosenberg, TX

Mirabeau B. Lamar arrived in Texas from Georgia in 1835 and rose meteorically—a private who was made a colonel on the eve of San Jacinto, where he commanded the cavalry with distinction, then vice-president and, in 1838, the second president of the Republic of Texas. His administration opposed annexation, pursued an aggressive Indian policy, and won recognition from Britain and France. Above all he is remembered as the father of Texas public education. He died in 1859 and lies buried in Morton Cemetery.

Floresville, TX

A fortified outpost of San Antonio's Mission Espada, the Mission of the Goats guarded ranchlands along the San Antonio River near a well-known river crossing. Founded in the 1730s era of Spanish missions, it sheltered Indian herdsmen who tended mission cattle, and a chapel was built for their spiritual care. After the missions were secularized in 1794, the land passed to Canary Islander descendants, including the spirited Dona Maria Del Carmen Calvillo, who managed the ranch herself and kept the peace by paying tribute in beef.

Victoria, TX

Traditionally called the first great cattle ranch in Texas, Espíritu Santo traces to a 1722 Spanish mission that moved to this stretch of the Guadalupe River in 1726—giving Mission Valley its name. The mission's ranching operation swelled to an estimated 40,000 head and helped shape the famed Texas longhorn, and after secularization the land passed through Spanish and Mexican grants to owners like Quincy Davidson, who by 1878 controlled nearly all the cattle in Victoria County. Operated continuously since the eighteenth century, the ranch and the ruins of its mission preserve a deep record of Spanish colonial Texas.

Balmorhea, TX

From 1895 to 1935 Father Nicholas Brocardus Eiken served scattered mission stations across this remote corner of far West Texas, among them Mission Mary, established by 1902 in the Calera community. The original adobe-and-rubble sanctuary was raised in 1925, its pillars later removed when the walls were plastered in the 1940s, and the little church still stands with its bell tower and exposed rafter tails. Most of the area's small missions — and the town of Calera itself — have since vanished.

Presidio vicinity, TX

In 1683–1684, Franciscan father Nicolas Lopez and Juan Dominguez de Mendoza established a string of missions in the Big Bend country, of which San Francisco de los Julimes was one. The mission aimed to convert and settle the Jumano, Julimes, and other Native peoples of the Rio Grande region under Spanish colonial rule. It reflects the northern edge of Spain's missionary frontier in what is now far West Texas.

Sonoma, CA · est. 1963

Founded in 1823 by Padre José Altimira, Mission San Francisco Solano was the northernmost of California's Franciscan missions and the only one established under newly independent Mexico. When Mexico secularized the missions, commandant Mariano Vallejo carried out the order here in 1834, and the site became the parish church of Sonoma. It served the pueblo until it was sold in 1881.

Grapevine, TX

In 1844 a cluster of related families from Platte County, Missouri, made their way to this part of North Texas, settling on land owned by early pioneer James Gibson. More kin and friends followed in 1845, and the group became known as the "Missouri Colony," raising cattle and grain and worshiping and schooling their children at nearby Lonesome Dove. Some pressed on to open other frontiers, while others stayed to build the first permanently settled corner of Tarrant County.

Granbury, TX

This bend of the Brazos and the surrounding country take their name from early settler Nelson Cooney Mitchell, whose feud with the Truett family ended in a murder conviction and his hanging in 1875. Mitchell lies in this cemetery among many other pioneer families, alongside the graveyard's earliest marked grave—a one-year-old child who died in 1872. Local tradition holds that some unmarked graves may predate the Civil War.

Colorado City, TX

Mitchell County was carved out of West Texas territory in 1876 and organized in 1881 when the railroad arrived, turning Colorado City into a booming supply hub known as the region's 'Mother City.' Named for War for Independence veterans Asa and Eli Mitchell, the county blended cattle, sheep, and later oil into its economy. Its landmarks — a former Comanche village site and Seven Wells, remembered as a last buffalo watering hole — mark the transition from Indigenous and frontier land to a railroad-era ranching center.

Jacksonville, TX

Settlers from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas founded the Pine Springs community — later Mixon — in the 1850s, and in 1853 Josiah Thomas set aside land for churches and religious use. The cemetery's oldest marked grave dates to 1854, with many early burials marked by local red iron-ore rock, and tradition holds that members of local Indian tribes lie in unmarked graves. More than 125 veterans rest here, from the War of 1812 to the present, including twenty-two Confederate soldiers.

Clark County, NV

Long a home to Puebloan farming peoples and noted by trapper Jedediah Smith in 1826, the Moapa Valley near the junction of the Muddy and Virgin Rivers drew Mormon settlers in 1865. Sent by Brigham Young to grow cotton and open a Colorado River route to the Pacific, they built the "cotton mission" of St. Thomas and raised orchards, vineyards, grain, and cotton. When an 1870 survey placed the valley in Nevada and saddled residents with back taxes, they abandoned years of labor and miles of canals. Others returned in 1880, and the valley remains among Nevada's most productive farmland.

Mobeetie, TX

Mobeetie claims to be the oldest town in the Texas Panhandle, beginning as a trading post in 1874 and relocating to sit nearer the protection of Fort Elliott the following year. First called Sweetwater and renamed in 1879, it grew into a rough, lively hub of hunters, cowboys, and gamblers, and in 1881 became the judicial seat of the 35th District — where Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston, served as district attorney and state senator. Bypassed by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1888 and battered by an 1898 tornado, the town faded into decline.

Mobeetie, TX

Said to be the first established cemetery in the Texas Panhandle, Mobeetie Cemetery was born of necessity beside a town that grew from an 1875 buffalo hunters' camp and army post. Tornadoes and time have erased many markers, but the oldest surviving stone dates to 1882. Among its graves lie outlaws, accused horse thieves, victims of an 1898 cyclone, and the famed Texas Ranger Captain G. W. Arrington.

Mobeetie, TX

Soon after Wheeler County was organized in 1879, settlers at Old Mobeetie formed a Union church, and on April 2, 1894, its thirteen Baptist members organized their own congregation. They met in public buildings until a sanctuary was raised in 1919. After the Panhandle & Santa Fe Railroad bypassed Old Mobeetie and the town declined, the church building was moved to New Mobeetie in 1942, carrying its ministry across two communities.

Mobeetie, TX

Mail service in Wheeler County began at Fort Elliott before a U.S. post office opened in 1879 in the town of Mobeetie—earlier called Sweetwater—with George A. Montgomery as first postmaster. When the town relocated a mile north to the Santa Fe rail line, a new post office rose here in 1928. Rural routes expanded to reach the region's growing farm families in the 1930s, then contracted as drought and hardship emptied the surrounding land.

Mobeetie, TX

Mobeetie grew from an 1874 buffalo hunters' camp and the 1875 founding of Fort Elliott, and Methodists were preaching there by 1881. A mission congregation formed by 1884 lost its sanctuary and most of the town to an 1898 tornado, later buying a shared Union Church. When the town relocated toward the railroad in the late 1920s, the congregation followed, worshipping in a basement before completing its present sanctuary in 1947.

Modesto, CA

Modesto sprang up in 1870 as the Central Pacific Railroad pushed its line down California's San Joaquin Valley, one of a string of new farm-and-rail towns laid out along the tracks. It soon became the seat of Stanislaus County, anchoring the courthouse, records, and civic life of a region that grew rich on wheat and, later, irrigated orchards. The name itself nods to that railroad era, and the town's motto—'Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health'—still captures its agricultural ambitions.

Temple vicinity, TX

Founded in 1857 by New York physician Dr. Chauncy W. Moffet and his wife Amelia, the town took its name from a misspelling of theirs. A Union loyalist in a Confederate state, Dr. Moffet was pressed into Confederate service, later aided the Union, and vanished mysteriously after returning home in 1868. The town was platted that year and grew to hold three churches, a school, a post office, stores, and small industries.

Temple, TX

Moffat Cemetery began as a family and Masonic burial ground, its oldest marked grave that of Mary Marshall, who died in 1861. Land set aside from a farm sale in 1869 grew through gifts to the Leon Masonic Lodge and, from 1921, to a dedicated cemetery association. Among those resting here is pioneer Isaac Thomas Bean, who came to Texas with his family in 1823, and the grounds hold both upright stones and distinctive stone cairns.

Goldthwaite, TX

Ambrose Bull bought part of the Moses Hughes tract in 1859 and became one of the first settlers of the Bulls Springs community, where a cemetery took root in the 1870s—its earliest burial believed to be War of 1812 veteran George Washington Joy. Placed in trust in 1899, the grounds hold 83 surveyed graves, many unknown, amid concrete curbing, brick crypts, iron fencing, and stone markers. Many of the tombstones bear poems written by grieving family members.

Nocona, TX

When the Rev. Abraham Molsbee brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1888, he helped plant Church of the Brethren congregations across the northwest of the state and into Indian Territory. The graveyard beside his chapel began that same year with the burial of his 20-year-old son Orville, and over generations it grew from a family plot into a community burial ground formally deeded in 1942. Its rows chronicle frontier hardship and the service of veterans from the Confederacy through World War I, World War II, and Vietnam.

Monohans, TX

The shifting dunes near Monahans hold traces of an astonishingly deep human past—flint points, grinding stones, and the bones of mammoths and giant bison from a wetter, grassier age. Spanish explorers Cabeza de Vaca and Antonio de Espejo met the Jumano people here in the 1500s, and for more than a century Apache and Comanche fought over its scarce water and shinnery-oak acorns along the Comanche War Trail. Later the California gold rush sent emigrant wagons through the sand, first mapped by Army engineers in 1849 and 1854; the state set aside 3,000 acres as a park in 1957.

Monongahela, PA · est. 1947

Monongahela is remembered as the oldest settlement in its valley, a river town whose life turned on the water from the very start. Devore's Ferry, chartered in 1775, made it a crossing and transportation hub long before the town was laid out in 1796 as Williamsport, and it became a city in 1873. From its banks countless pioneers pushed off to begin the river journey westward.

Monongahela, PA · est. 1947

Monongahela is remembered as the oldest settlement in its valley, a river town whose life turned on the water from the very start. Devore's Ferry, chartered in 1775, made it a crossing and transportation hub long before the town was laid out in 1796 as Williamsport, and it became a city in 1873. From its banks countless pioneers pushed off to begin the river journey westward.

Monongahela, PA · est. 1947

Monongahela is remembered as the oldest settlement in its valley, a river town whose life turned on the water from the very start. Devore's Ferry, chartered in 1775, made it a crossing and transportation hub long before the town was laid out in 1796 as Williamsport, and it became a city in 1873. From its banks countless pioneers pushed off to begin the river journey westward.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1983

Monroe County was formed in 1836 from Northampton and Pike counties and named for President James Monroe. The land had earlier been a frontier battleground, marked by Indian raids between 1755 and 1782 and crossed by part of General Sullivan's 1779 march against the Iroquois. In later generations its Pocono Mountains blossomed into one of the Northeast's most famous resort regions.

Montague, TX

The first settlers reached Montague County in 1849, and after the county formed in 1857 the town of Montague rose as its seat. Pioneer James M. Gibbons is remembered as donating the cemetery's first plot when his wife Elizabeth died in 1862. Among the graves — about sixty bearing legible nineteenth-century dates — rest Confederate veterans, early Texas Rangers, and numerous founding families of the area.

Bowie, TX

Montague County was carved out of the North Texas frontier in 1857 and organized the next year, taking its name from Daniel Montague, a pioneer surveyor who mapped the region and fought as a militia commander in the Mexican War. Surveyors like Montague were the advance guard of Anglo settlement, translating raw land into the grid of counties and farms. The town of Montague became its seat.

Montague, TX

Montague County, created in 1857 on the North Texas frontier, cycled through log, frame, and stone courthouses—several lost to fire and one wrecked by a 1912 storm—before commissioners hired Waco architect George Burnett to design the present Classical Revival building. Completed in 1913 by contractor A. H. Rodgers, the three-story brick and stone "temple of justice" features four staircased entrances, porticos, and dentils. It has anchored county government for more than a century.

Brackettville, TX

Around 1887 Yldefonso Montalvo, also known as Obed Woods, built this house from cedar pickets and caliche plaster gathered close at hand. The educated son of an English mother and a Mexican father, he worked as a rancher and for nearby Fort Clark and a local store, raising nine children here with his wife Guadalupe. The dwelling reflects the resourceful vernacular building of the Texas borderlands.

Rusk County, TX

Built by Julien Sidney Devereux (1805–1856)—a justice of the peace, county commissioner, and legislator—Monte Verdi was a frontier interpretation of southern Greek Revival architecture, set so high on his roughly 10,000-acre plantation that much of Rusk, Cherokee, and Nacogdoches counties could be seen from its upstairs porch. It was one of the most significant antebellum plantations in Texas, worked by scores of enslaved people whose labor made its scale possible. The house was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.

Uvalde, TX

A Methodist mission took hold in the small community of Montell in 1889, its early members gathering wherever they could—including a summer brush arbor—before a Union Sunday School formed by 1895. A permanent sanctuary was dedicated in 1908, hosting monthly services that paused only briefly during World War II. Descendants of those pioneer families still worship here on alternating Sundays.

Lubbock, TX

Monterey High School opened in 1955, taking its name from one of the two original townsites platted for Lubbock. That earlier Monterey was founded in present-day northwest Lubbock by W. E. Rayner in 1890, but in a notable 1891 compromise Rayner joined forces with the rival townsite's promoters to establish Lubbock in its current location. The school thus carries forward the name of a would-be town that merged into the city instead.

Montgomery, TX

Baptists in Montgomery organized a fellowship in 1850 and bought this site the same year, calling their first full-time pastor, the Rev. Thomas Chilton, in 1853. The present vernacular Gothic Revival sanctuary went up in 1902 under Pastor O. P. Stark, who is said to have designed the building himself. A 1918 storm toppled the upper steeple, an education wing followed in the 1940s, and the congregation worshiped here until 1979.