Carson Cemetery

The marker names Minerva Hunter and her daughter Elizabeth, and gives the third victim only as an African American maid whose name is unknown; no source consulted supplies it. It calls the attack an Indian raid but does not say which people were involved. The Handbook of Texas notes that no Indians lived in the county in 1836, when White settlers arrived, and that the Caddo had joined the Cherokees and their Twelve Associated Bands, so the plaque's wording leaves open who the raiders were. Minerva Hunter's grave was marked in 1942, a century after the raid.

What the plaque says

Carson Cemetery According to local oral tradition, this cemetery was named for John Carson, who once owned the adjacent land. Some sources say one grave was in existence before 1842; others maintain the first graves date to an 1842 Indian raid at the nearby home of Dr. and Mrs. W. M. Hunter. The three victims of the raid were Mrs. Minerva Hunter, her young daughter Elizabeth, and an African American maid whose name is unknown. By 1878, the cemetery trustees acquired title to the land and they later added more acreage. Among those buried here are land donors Mr. & Mrs. W. E. Alderson, Mr. & Mrs. W. R. Luton, and T. M. Newell. Minerva Hunter's grave was marked in 1942, a century after her death. (1974, 1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 4.8 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 23 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 26 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Ector Methodist Church — 2.1 mi
• Ector Lodge No. 687, A. F. & A. M. — 2.2 mi
• Fort Warren — 4.2 mi
• Savoy Methodist Church — 4.9 mi