Lewis Family Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker record — so here's the story as it stands. Now, before there was a Lewis Family Cemetery, there was a man named Thomas Curry, born in 1771 in South Carolina. Thomas married a woman named Satsay — sometimes written Satsa — Vann, a member of the Cherokee Indian tribe and the daughter of a tribal leader.

Together they had nine children. That's a house full of history right there. After Satsa passed, Thomas didn't stay put.

He gathered several family members — including his son David and David's wife Jane Phillips — and joined a group of colonists heading to Texas in 1834. They were making their way into Sterling C. Robertson's colonies, and Thomas was accepted as a settler in the Nashville Colony.

His one league land grant stretched from south of Little River all the way to Elm Creek. Big country. The very ground that would one day hold the Lewis Family Cemetery.

Thomas Curry died in 1841. Then David and Jane Curry, who'd had their four children over in Robertson County, packed up and moved to Milam County. And in 1847, they moved again — this time onto the Thomas Curry land grant itself, planting roots deeper into that same stretch of Texas soil.

Now here's where the Lewis name enters the story. David and Jane's daughter, Anne Elizabeth, married a man called Squire William Michael Lewis. And Squire Lewis was not a man content to sit on the porch.

He was the first Justice of the Peace in Corinth. He was a charter member of the Masonic Lodge in Cameron. He helped build the Milam County Courthouse.

He and Anne Elizabeth were prominent in the development of Corinth, Buckholts, and Cameron — three communities that still carry that legacy. And then there was the war. Squire served in the Confederacy's Fourth Texas Mounted Volunteers during the Civil War, participating in campaigns in Louisiana and New Mexico.

When a man rides that far and fights that long, you'd think he'd have time to grow old. But Squire Lewis died in 1867, and he was buried beneath a large oak tree on the family ranch. That burial — that single grave under that oak — is what established the Lewis Family Cemetery.

Others followed. More than two dozen people in all, seventeen of them family members. The land that Thomas Curry had claimed in 1834 became a place of keeping.

And then 1877 brought something darker still. A typhoid epidemic swept through, and it claimed Elizabeth and Tapley Dewberry and Elizabeth Hutchins. They and other neighbors were laid to rest here too, among the family.

The majority of graves in this historic graveyard date from before 1900. A colony, a Cherokee daughter, a land grant, a courthouse, a war, a fever — all of it folded into one quiet piece of Milam County ground. That oak tree Squire Lewis was buried under?

It was already there when he arrived. Some places just become what they were always going to be.

What the marker says

This family burial ground has roots in Sterling C. Robertston's colonies of the 1830s. Thomas Curry, born in 1771 in South Carolina, married Satsay (Satsa) Vann, a member of the Cherokee Indian tribe and daughter of a tribal leader. They had nine children, and following Satsa's death, Thomas and several family members, including son David and his wife Jane (Phillips), joined a group of colonists settling in Texas in 1834. Thomas was accepted as a settler in the Nashville Colony, and his one league grant of land stretched from south of Little River to Elm Creek, including the land on which the Lewis Family Cemetery is sited. After Thomas died in 1841, David and Jane Curry moved from Robertson County, where their four children were born, to Milam County. In 1847, the Currys moved to the Thomas Curry land grant. Daughter Anne Elizabeth married Squire William Michael Lewis, and they were prominent in the development of the communities of Corinth, Buckholts and Cameron. Squire was the first Justice of the Peace in Corinth and a charter member of the Masonic Lodge in Cameron, and helped build the Milam County Courthouse. He also served in the Confederacy's Fourth Texas Mounted Volunteers during the Civil War, participating in campaigns in Louisiana and New Mexico. Squire Lewis died in 1867 and was buried beneath a large oak tree on the family ranch, establishing the Lewis Family Cemetery. More than two dozen people, including seventeen family members, are buried here. In 1877, a typhoid epidemic caused the deaths of Elizabeth and Tapley Dewberry and Elizabeth Hutchins; they and other neighbors were also buried here. The majority of the graves in this historic graveyard are from before 1900. Historic Texas Cemetery-2007