Tennessee Colony Cemetery

Duane's take

This one comes straight from the official marker, and I'm gonna do my best to do it justice. Now, before Anderson County even had a name, before it had a courthouse or a county seat or any of the trappings of organized Texas civilization, there was Tennessee Colony. Settlers from the southern United States put down roots here in 1838, and they did what settlers do when they mean to stay: they built a church.

A log church, up on a hill near this very site. That's a community telling you, loud and clear, we are not leaving. Now, the land itself goes back even further.

This ground sits on the Manuel Riondo Land Grant of 1833, so the legal claim to this soil predates the colony, predates Anderson County, predates quite a lot. And somewhere in that early tangle of arriving families and cleared fields and that log church on the hill, people started burying their dead here. The Tennessee Colony Cemetery may hold graves from the 1840s and 1850s.

May. That word is doing some heavy lifting, because here is the thing: no marked stones remain from that era. None.

There is a large vacant area right in the center of the burial ground, and it once held numerous fieldstones, each one marking a grave, each one saying somebody was here, somebody mattered. Over the years, those stones were moved. Misplaced.

Gone. So the names, the dates, the quiet declarations of a life lived, all of that has slipped away. The earliest grave we can still point to and read belongs to Mrs.

Manurva E. Shelton, born in 1831, who died on September 13, 1862. She is the first anchor in a record that almost didn't survive at all.

The people buried around her across the generations include pioneer area settlers and their descendants, military veterans, members of local fraternal orders, and community leaders. This ground has held all kinds. In 1974, the heirs of M.

S. Avant, who was born in 1834 and died in 1906, formally deeded this land to the Tennessee Colony Cemetery Association. A formal deed, after all that time, making official what the community had long understood.

And the cemetery is still used today. Still receiving. Still reflecting, as that marker puts it, over a century of this area's history, reaching all the way back to the days of the Republic of Texas.

A log church on a hill, fieldstones scattered to the wind, and one name still readable in the grass. Tennessee Colony has been here a long, long time.

What the marker says

Settlers from the southern United States founded Tennessee Colony in 1838, years before the formation of Anderson County. One of their first community efforts was construction of a log church building on a hill near this site. Located on the Manuel Riondo Land Grant of 1833, the Tennessee Colony Cemetery may include graves dating from the 1840s and 1850s, although no marked stones remain as evidence. A large vacant area in the center of the burial ground once included numerous fieldstones indicating the presence of individual gravesites. Over the years, however, the stones have been moved or misplaced. The earliest marked grave is that of Mrs. Manurva E. Shelton (b. 1831), who died on September 13, 1862. Other interments here include those of pioneer area settlers and their descendants, military veterans, members of local fraternal orders, and community leaders. In 1974, the heirs of M. S. Avant (1834 - 1906) formally deeded this land to the Tennessee Colony Cemetery Association. Still used, the Tennessee Colony Cemetery reflects over a century of the area's history dating from the days of the Republic of Texas. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986