Historical Marker

Elkins Cemetery

Brownwood vicinity, Brown County · Texas
Erected 1994

The community around this graveyard has had two names and one long interruption. A county historical commission survey says it was first called Gholson and was renamed Elkins after 1900 for a family that ran a mercantile store. Burials continued from 1876 until the Camp Bowie years, 1939 to 1946, when the community was displaced and some graves were moved to places the families chose. After the camp was declared obsolete some residents returned. The survey counts eighteen veterans, most of them Confederate, and two Union veterans.

What the plaque says

Elkins Cemetery This cemetery traces its origin to 1876, when noted pioneer minister Noah T. Byars helped establish Live Oak Baptist Church. That year, Civil War veteran Silas H. Wood moved his extended family from Mississippi and settled on land which included this site. The first recorded burial was that of D.O. Melton in 1876. Wood donated about three acres including the graveyard to Live Oak Baptist Church in 1884. Known earlier as Gholson, a name it shared with an area school, it later was named Elkins for the town that developed here. The cemetery continued in use as a community graveyard until interments ceased when the construction of Camp Bowie here during World War II resulted in the temporary displacement of the Elkins community. Camp Bowie was discontinued in 1947, after which a rural community developed and the cemetery was again in use. Buried here are many of the area's pioneer families and their descendants; veterans of World War I; and at least three Civil War veterans, including Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Isaac A. Melton, whose funeral in 1910 was attended by fellow Confederate Civil War veterans and Masonic friends. The cemetery is maintained by the Elkins Cemetery Association and continues to serve the community. (1994)

Where it stands

31.59555, -98.87986 · Directions

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