Courtney Cemetery

The plaque's McAlpine Town was an addition to an older railroad town. Courtney grew up about 1860, when the Houston and Texas Central built south of Navasota and put up a freight platform, depot and telegraph office; the post office opened that year. The town was named for Courtney Ann Fulton Groce, wife of Leonard Waller Groce, on land first worked in the 1820s by slaveholding Anglo settlers. Rev. Prince Kiel organized Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in 1871, a two-story brick school went up in 1913, and the town shrank after World War II.

What the plaque says

Courtney Cemetery Located on land which is adjacent to the 1873 subdivision of Courtney known as McAlpine Town, this cemetery was established by developer Dugald McAlpine (1795-1876). The oldest documented grave in the cemetery is that of W. S. Draper (1828-1873). There are some unmarked graves which may date from an earlier period. Those interred here include community leaders, descendants of early settlers, and veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Korea. A cemetery association, formed in 1971, cares for the historic graveyard. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 6.4 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 6.6 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 8.2 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Lynn Grove United Methodist Church — 2.2 mi
• Primus Kelly — 2.8 mi
• Mercy Seat Baptist Church — 3.3 mi
• Amos Gates — 3.6 mi