Historical Marker
Cox Cemetery
Canton, Van Zandt County · Texas
Erected 1986
The graveyard began as a family plot. A local history page calls it the Gibbs Family Graveyard and dates its oldest marked grave to 1853, an infant named Ellen S. Gibbs. M. A. Cox, a former county commissioner, bought part of the Gibbs survey in 1872, and his brother R. D. Cox took the land in 1880 and set ground aside for a public cemetery. It holds 254 graves, 36 of them marked Cox. Two graves near the west gate, marked by large rocks and iron-pipe crosses, are remembered through oral history as those of enslaved people.
What the plaque says
Cox Cemetery Robert K. Gibbs and his family settled in this area in the early 1850s. A gravestone for an infant daughter of R. K. and Sarah Gibbs reveals the earliest documented burial in this cemetery to be November 1853. Robert Daniel Cox (1842--1898) acquired the land in 1880. He offered the small Gibbs family graveyard for use as a community cemetery. It became known as Cox Graveyard or Cox Cemetery. Land additions in 1920 and 1933 enlarged the cemetery. Some unmarked graves are believed to be those of slaves. Five generations of Cox family members are interred here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Where it stands
32.45105, -95.77176 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Purtis Creek State Park — 15 miA 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 — 16 miA 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.
- Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 27 miMore than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
- Governor Hogg Shrine — 30 miQuitman'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.
More markers nearby
- Holly Springs United Methodist Church — 1.0 mi
- Lexie Dean Robertson — 2.7 mi
- Ben Wheeler Community — 3.9 mi
- Morgan G. Sanders — 4.0 mi