Apolonia Cemetery

The post office this cemetery is named for had a Polish Catholic story behind it. Apolonia began around 1835 as a lumber settlement about three miles east of Anderson, with Pine Grove Baptist Church by the early 1840s and later a school. After the Civil War a Black Methodist congregation built Yarborough's Chapel nearby. Polish immigrants arrived in the 1880s and 1890s and named the 1889 post office for Saint Apollonia. Around 1900 the place had three general stores and two sawmills. The office closed in 1907, and by 1948 about twenty-five people remained.

What the plaque says

Apolonia Cemetery Known as Pine Grove for the Baptist church that was focus for community in the area, this burial ground was in use in 1860s. Tombstone of Mrs. Harriet Hobdy Kelley is dated 1869, but there may be earlier, unmarked graves. Land donors were (1886) J. L. and Eveline Mansfield. War veterans here: the Confederates Richard Butler, Henderson Green, and W. T. Wasson; also Wasson's son, Brosig T. Wasson, Grimes County's first fatality of World War I. When the church disbanded in 1929, the cemetery was renamed for area's defunct post office. At least one family has 3 generations here. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 5.3 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 13 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 19 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 19 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Waller Cemetery — 4.1 mi
• Richards Colored School — 5.0 mi
• Fanthorp Inn — 5.3 mi
• Michael Moore Kennard — 5.4 mi