DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere out here in Waller County, there's ground that remembers something most folks have long forgotten. Let me tell you about it.
During the Civil War, Hempstead — just two and a half miles to the west — was an important railroad junction, and that made it valuable. Several Confederate military facilities were positioned near it for exactly that reason. One of them was Camp Groce, a prisoner-of-war stockade established on the plantation of Leonard Waller Groce, who lived from 1806 to 1873.
In those days, Camp Groce sat about six miles to the east of where you are now. Union Army prisoners who died at various camps were brought here and buried on the McDade Plantation, right alongside the McDade family cemetery — about twenty-five yards to the northeast. The cemeteries sat near a narrow gauge spur off what was called the Austin Branch of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, a line that had been built out from Houston back in 1858.
So the dead were laid to rest beside a working railroad, in woods fed by a stream, marked by crude crosses made of cedar limbs. Now here's where it gets heavy. In 1864, a yellow fever epidemic swept through Camp Groce and other camps, and it killed a lot of men.
We know this in part because of one man who survived to write it down — Aaron T. Sutton, born 1841, died 1927, a Union prisoner serving in Company B, 83rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Sutton kept a journal.
And in that journal, he noted the presence of more than a hundred fresh graves at this very site, observed soon after his arrival at Camp Groce in 1864. More than a hundred. Let that number sit with you for a moment.
Sutton didn't stay. He later escaped from the stockade and made his way to Beaumont — one hundred and fifteen miles to the east — on foot. On foot.
Whatever that journey cost him, he made it. And because he did, his journal survived, and those men's deaths were chronicled. For decades after the war, local residents could still see those cedar-limb crosses standing in the woodland, marking the graves through the early nineteen hundreds.
But in the 1940s, the stream-fed woodland was cleared for pasture land. And when that happened, all surface evidence of the cemetery was lost. The pasture doesn't remember.
But the marker does. And now, so do you.
What the marker says
Several Confederate military facilities were positioned near Hempsted (2.5 mi. w), an important railroad junction, during the Civil War. Camp Groce (then about 6 mi. e) was a prisoner-of-war stockade established on the plantation of Leonard Waller Groce (1806-1873). Union Army prisoners who died at various camps were buried hear this site on the McDade Plantation, adjacent to the McDade family cemetery (about 25 yds. ne). The cemeteries were near a narrow gauge spur off the "Austin Branch" of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad, built from Houston in 1858. A yellow fever epidemic in 1864 resulted in many deaths at Camp Groce and other camps, chronicled by Aaron T. Sutton (1841-1927). a Union prisoner in Company B, 83rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Sutton noted in his journal the presence of more than 100 fresh graves here soon after his arrival at Camp Groce in 1864. Sutton later escaped from the stockade and made his way to Beaumont (115 mi. e) on foot. Crude crosses made of cedar limbs marked the prisoners' graves through the early 1900s, according to local residents. But the stream-fed woodland was cleared in the 1940s for pasture land, and all surface evidence of the cemetery was lost.