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

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