Elm Grove Cemetery

Seven Points, the settlement this cemetery served, became Westminster because of a school. J. M. Harder opened a private school there in 1888 and sold the building seven years later to the Methodist Church, which made it Westminster College, a preparatory school for ministers. It was named for Westminster, Maryland, a stronghold of Methodism in a mostly Catholic state, and within a year of the college opening the residents renamed their town for it. A traction line from Anna reached the town in 1915 and was abandoned in 1920, and the major railroads bypassed it.

What the plaque says

Elm Grove Cemetery Members of the pioneer Roland family, natives of Alabama, settled here in the 1830s. Land at this site was part of a Republic of Texas land grant awarded to family members in recognition of the military service of John Roland, who was killed during the Texas Revolution. Receiving the property were his mother, Martha Roland Arrington, and two brothers Sherrod and Ezekial Roland. A veteran of the Texas Revolution, Ezekial (b. 1824) and his wife Mahala (Pace) set aside this part of the land grant for use as a public cemetery. The first burial here was that of the donor, Ezekial Roland, who died at the age of 35, in 1859. The pioneer Elm Grove Cemetery also served the earliest residents of the Seven Points community, later known as Westminster. Established in the 1860s, the town was the site of an early Methodist school, Westminster College, which operated here until the early 1900s, and a later Baptist academy. Still in use, Elm Grove Cemetery contains over 1500 known graves and 250 unidentified gravesites. For over 100 years it was served as the burial site of pioneers, community leaders, and residents of the surrounding rural area. (11981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 17 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 28 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.

More markers nearby

• Westminster College — 1.3 mi
• First Christian Church of Anna — 4.1 mi
• Public Education in Anna — 4.2 mi
• James P. Dumas — 4.3 mi