Colony Cemetery

The settlers buried here came for cotton, and the ground let them down. The Handbook of Texas dates the community to 1880, when migrants from Mississippi arrived to farm soil they judged fertile, and calls it Mississippi Colony until a post office opened in 1884 under the shorter name. The soil eroded easily and lost its strength, and during the first half of the twentieth century the fields went back to pasture. The post office closed in 1906, children later rode to school at Cistern, and the Muldoon oilfield came too late to revive the town.

What the plaque says

Colony Cemetery The Colony community, settled in the 1870s by former residents of Mississippi, at one time included three churches, several stores, and a post office. John A. and Margaret Young donated land at this site in 1876 for a Methodist church and cemetery. The graveyard became the primary burial ground for the community. The oldest documented grave is that of Methodist minister Samuel J. Brown (1813-1879). Also interred here are numerous other pioneer settlers, infants and children, and military veterans. The cemetery serves as a reflection of the area's pioneer heritage. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 9.7 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 16 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 19 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 20 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.

More markers nearby

• Robert Hancock Hunter — 6.7 mi
• James Carrel Bell — 7.0 mi
• Simon Peter Ford — 7.1 mi
• Flatonia — 7.2 mi