Emmaus

Emmaus sat on a pioneer road running from Griffin in Cherokee County to New Salem in Rusk County. Emmaus Baptist Church of Christ was organized on February 23, 1877, and in 1881 Col. Thomas A. Cocke and his wife Mary deeded two acres to the deacons for a church and cemetery. By 1920 an interdenominational church let Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians alternate weekends. Early in the century Bob Houghton ran a general store and cotton gin. The school consolidated with New Summerfield's in 1936, and a 1984 map showed only the cemetery.

What the plaque says

Emmaus The small rural community of Emmaus was settled in the 1860s. By the 1870s the Emmaus Baptist Church was organized. School classes were held in the church building until 1881, when Dr. J. M. Brittain donated two acres of land for a public school. At its height, the community consisted of farms, two general stores, two churches, a school, and a cotton gin. One of the few physical reminders of the settlement, the Emmaus Cemetery dates to 1886. The area became known as New Emmaus in 1953 with the construction of the New Emmaus Baptist Church. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 16 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 26 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 27 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 28 mi
  More 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Griffin — 2.1 mi
• Robert Graves Stadler — 3.4 mi
• New Summerfield Public School — 4.2 mi
• Knoxville — 5.6 mi