Authon Cemetery

Authon's name began as a postal correction. Residents applied in 1882 for a post office called Arthur, and postal authorities substituted Authon, according to the Handbook of Texas. The Handbook estimates seventy-five residents by 1890, served by three churches, a public school, a blacksmith shop and a general store, with a steam gin processing area cotton. Grain, livestock and hides were the other products. Mail service stopped in 1904. The Handbook reports a population of five in 1990 and fifteen in 2000, a long way down from the crossroads town of the 1890s.

What the plaque says

Authon Cemetery Named for the nearby Authon Community, located on the Fort Worth-Fort Belknap Military Road, this site first served as a cemetery for the family of Kentucky native Isom Cranfill (1831-1902). The earliest burial here was that of his 15-year-old son, Linn Boyd Cranfill (d. 1871), who was killed in an Indian attack near the family home (.75 mile south). The cemetery and adjoining land were later deeded to the Authon Church of Christ, who worshiped in a sanctuary at this site until the 1920s. Still in use, the public burial ground contains the graves of many pioneer area settlers. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 6.6 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 11 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 27 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• Peaster Cemetery — 5.2 mi
• Jack Llewellyn Knight — 5.4 mi
• Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern Railway — 6.8 mi
• Fort Wolters — 7.0 mi