Bethel Cemetery

The Rev. Robert Hodge, buried here, was born in Tennessee in 1805 and moved to Mississippi in 1823, according to an August 1901 Athens Weekly Review biography. He came to Texas in 1850 and first settled near Brushy Creek in Anderson County. In 1853 he moved to the Science Hill community in Henderson County. The paper calls him the only Cumberland Presbyterian minister living in that county before the Civil War and the leading force in organizing Science Hill Academy. It adds that he was census taker in 1860 and Science Hill postmaster.

What the plaque says

Bethel Cemetery Originally part of a Mexican land grant awarded to Jose de Jesus Grande in 1828, land at this site was later granted to early area settler Henry Rampy. Rampy, who had come to this part of Texas in 1848, deeded 5 acres of his land in 1859 for a community cemetery and church. The earliest significant settlement of pioneers in the Bethel area came in 1846. By 1852, the community was thriving and a post office was established. The Bethel Cemetery was used largely by residents of the town and by settlers in other parts of Anderson and Henderson counties. The earliest marked grave, that of M. B. Hodge, is dated 1862. Her husband, the Rev. Robert Hodge, who also is buried here, was a pioneer Cumberland Presbyterian minister. He was instrumental in the founding of the Science Hill academy, an important early educational institution in this part of the state. Other early settlers and their descendants are buried here, as are a number of Confederate veterans. The Bethel community began to decline after the end of the Civil War and was largely gone by the time the post office was discontinued in 1914. This cemetery is the only significant remnant of the once-thriving Anderson County community. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 22 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 24 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Judson Baptist Church — 4.5 mi
• New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — 4.5 mi
• Science Hill — 7.3 mi
• Tennessee Colony — 7.9 mi