Bald Prairie Cemetery

The plaque's Duck Creek people and prairie people describe one move. The Handbook of Texas says settlers first took the creek banks, then climbed onto the open prairie after bouts of creek fever, and found the ground they had passed over good for cotton, corn and livestock. Bald Prairie was a favored camp meeting site in the 1860s and had a post office by 1875. As railroads built up other towns, it faded. Gilbert Sterling Ross, who added an acre here in 1957, was its last postmaster; the office closed in 1951.

What the plaque says

Bald Prairie Cemetery A leading citizen, Elijah Rains (1813-1889), who came to Texas from Tennessee in 1848, gave this burial ground to the public. Duck Creek people soon joined the Prairie people in its use. The earliest known burial was Walter Pirtle, date uncertain. The grave of Samuel E. Lightsey (1827-1872) has the oldest marker. Veterans of the Civil War and later conflicts are buried here. The cemetery association was formed in 1928. In 1957, Gilbert Sterling Ross added a donation of one acre to the original 5-acre plot. Annual Memorial Day services honor some 600 marked graves. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calvert — 22 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Old Fort Parker — 25 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Fort Boggy State Park — 27 mi
  A 1,847-acre park in Leon County named for a settlers' palisade of 1840, with a 15-acre lake, short trails and the story of Tennessee farmers, the Keechi and a Ranger captain.

More markers nearby

• Bald Prairie Church of Christ — steps away
• Ebenezer Baptist Church and Cemetery — 5.2 mi
• Site of Oletha Common School — 9.7 mi
• Site of Old Potter's Shop — 9.9 mi