Dew Cemetery

The Handbook of Texas gives Dew a short ledger. By 1891 the town had three cotton gins, three general stores, a blacksmith, several churches and about 150 people. Rural delivery replaced its post office in 1909. In 1947 the community had five stores, a school and 195 residents, and by 1992 it reported seventy-one. The entry notes that descendants and area residents still gather each year at the cemetery, where a historical marker was placed in 1977. The graveyard is the part of Dew that outlasted the stores and gins.

What the plaque says

Dew Cemetery The first families in this community migrated from Alabama i the 1850s. Originally known as Avant or Avant Prairie, the settlement became Sunshine after the Sunshine Methodist Church moved here from Harrison Chapel in 1870. In 1869 W. S. Compton, one of the early settlers, and D. A. Self, local merchant and dentist, donated land for this community cemetery. First burial was that of a young girl, Missouri A. E. Humphrey (1869-1871). Other early graves date from the yellow fever epidemic of 1873. The town was renamed in 1885 when Dew Post Office opened. The name "Drew" was requested to honor a local resident, but postal officials misread the application. A market center for cotton farmers of the area, Dew had a cotton gin and several stores. Rural delivery replaced the Dew Post Office in 1909. A land donation by Wiley Black in 1901 enlarged the graveyard, which lies adjacent to Dew Methodist Church where funeral services are held. About 1912-13 a cemetery association was organized. Descendants and community residents gather at annual Memorial Day observances to tend the 11 and 1/3 acre site. The 1000 graves here include many from the 1918-19 influenza epidemic. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 24 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Old Fort Parker — 24 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 25 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.

More markers nearby

• Antioch Cemetery — 4.6 mi
• Dogan High School — 8.3 mi
• Old Division Point Office for the "Boll Weevil" Railway — 8.7 mi
• Town of Teague — 8.7 mi