Colfax Cemetery

The community around the cemetery changed its name three times, the Handbook of Texas says. It began as Cold Water, after a log house used for worship, became Tunnell's Chapel in the late 1870s when Elisha Tunnell built a church that doubled as a school, and was probably first called Colfax in the early 1880s, for Vice President Schuyler Colfax of Indiana. In 1885 Methodist and Cumberland Presbyterian congregations raised a brush arbor, then a tabernacle, for camp meetings. School enrollment reached 122 in 1906, and the new Van school district absorbed Colfax after 1929.

What the plaque says

Colfax Cemetery In 1883, A. L. Kellam donated five acres of land that helped establish this cemetery. The first burial, which took place in 1884, was that of Elisha Tunnell, founder of Tunnell's Chapel, the rural community which later became known as Colfax. Land included with the burial ground has been occupied by three school buildings and two local churches, and was often the site of revivals and summer camp meetings. Colfax Cemetery which contains about 1,000 graves is the resting place of many of the area's pioneers and their descendants. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Purtis Creek State Park — 19 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.
• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 20 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.
• Governor Hogg Shrine — 25 mi
  Quitman's 27-acre city park, once a state historical park, where two houses tied to James Stephen Hogg's marriage stand beside an arboretum, a nature walk and the grounds of the Old Settlers Reunion.
• Tyler State Park — 26 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Brady P. Gentry — 2.7 mi
• The Free State of Van Zandt — 2.8 mi
• Cox Cemetery — 4.6 mi
• Morgan G. Sanders — 4.8 mi