Lowe's Chapel Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker at Lowe's Chapel Cemetery tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Cherokee County, a good story tends to start before anyone thought to write anything down. New settlers, most of them coming up from the southern states, were pushing into this part of the county by the late 1840s.

They were building lives, planting roots. And not long after they arrived, they started burying their dead here, which is the oldest kind of commitment a community can make to a place. Now, the oldest legible gravestones go back to the 1860s.

But local tradition reaches back a little further, to the early 1850s, when a wagon train was passing through. A child died. They buried that child here, marked the grave with a pile of rocks, and moved on.

That's the kind of beginning that doesn't get forgotten. No name recorded, no stone carved. Just a small mound of rocks, and a community that carried the memory forward anyway.

The Lowe name is woven through this whole stretch of Cherokee County. James Lowe was overseer of the road running from Rusk to Henderson, and the historic road itself threaded right through the heart of the family's world: from Johnson's Mill, past Lowe's Chapel, past Lowe's Farm, and on out to Stafford's Ferry on Mud Creek. That's a road with a story in every landmark along it.

When it came time to make the cemetery official, it was E. H. Lowe who deeded the land, five acres of it, to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which had a church sitting right there adjacent to the burial ground.

That deed was recorded in 1882, and the land was conveyed to three trustees: J. O. Cawthon, J.

H. Wilson, and W. L.

Manning. Five acres. Signed, sealed, and set aside for the long keeping of the community's dead.

And what a community it was. The families buried at Lowe's Chapel read like a roll call of Cherokee County itself. Andress, Bagley, Baxter, Blankinship, Brown, Cannon, Cawthon, Christopher, Copeland, Davis, Gifford, Grammer, Hall, Irwin, Jones, Manion, McDonald, Richey, Riggs, Roberts, Sanders, Parsons, Sherrard, Stafford, Summers, Thompson, Tosh, Waldrup, Watson, Wilkins, Wortham.

Say those names out loud sometime. That's not a list. That's a neighborhood.

Among them rest veterans, men who served in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. There are Woodmen of the World markers and Masonic gravestones standing among the family plots. And in the older section of the cemetery, there are sandstone markers gone too far past reading, and two plots enclosed by wrought iron fences, quiet and enclosed like small secrets the ground is keeping.

The Lowe's Chapel Cemetery Association has been tending to all of this since the early 1900s. And for more than eighty years, an annual homecoming has been held here. People come back.

Every year. To remember who they came from and who is still resting in the ground beneath this place. A wagon train passed through once, lost a child, and left a pile of rocks.

That was the beginning. More than a century and a half later, people are still coming back to make sure none of it gets forgotten. That's not just a cemetery.

That's a promise that's been kept.

What the marker says

New settlers arriving primarily from the southern states arrived in this section of Cherokee County by the late 1840s, and Lowe's Chapel Cemetery was begun soon after. Local tradition holds that as a wagon train passed through in the early 1850s, a child died and was buried here in a grave marked by a pile of rocks. The oldest legible gravestones record burials from the 1860s. James Lowe was overseer of the road leading to Lowe's Chapel from Rusk to Henderson. The historic road led from Johnson's Mill past Lowe's Chapel and Lowe's Farm on to Stafford's Ferry on Mud Creek. E. H. Lowe deeded land for the cemetery to the Methodist Episcopal Church, south, who had a church adjacent to the burial ground. The deed for five acres was recorded in 1882, with the land conveyed to trustees J. O. Cawthon, J. H. Wilson and W. L. Manning. Area families buried here include Andress, Bagley, Baxter, Blankinship, Brown, Cannon, Cawthon, Christopher, Copeland, Davis, Gifford, Grammer, Hall, Irwin, Jones, Manion, Mcdonald, Richey, Riggs, Roberts, Sanders, Parsons, Sherrard, Stafford, Summers, Thompson, Tosh, Waldrup, Watson, Wilkins and Wortham. A number of veterans are buried here, from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. There are also several woodmen of the world and masonic gravestones. In the older part of the cemetery, there are illegible sandstone markers and two plots enclosed by wrought iron fences. The Lowe's Chapel Cemetery Association dates back to the early 1900s. An annual homecoming has been held here for more than 80 years, ensuring that this historic community burial ground remains a significant and treasured place of heritage and memory. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY - 2016