Eureka Cemetery

Eureka took its name at a Grange meeting. The Handbook of Texas says the settlement grew around Dunn's School, a log schoolhouse built just before the Civil War, and that residents chose the name in 1870 when they applied for a post office, which opened in P. Anderson's home. By 1906 three schools served the community: two for white students with eighty-five pupils between them, and one for Black students with sixty-one. The school consolidated with Mildred's after World War II, and Eureka remained a scattered farming community.

What the plaque says

Eureka Cemetery Settlement in this area began in the 1840s. J. F. and J. M. Floyd, members of the local Richland Associate Reform Presbyterian Church organized in 1876, donated land here in 1878 for church and graveyard purposes. The first recorded burial was that of infant Nellie E. Sloan in 1885. The cemetery has been enlarged over the years and in 1995 contained about 13 acres. Buried here are local religious, education, and business leaders, elected officials, and veterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War to World War II. The cemetery is maintained by the Eureka Cemetery Association. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 13 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Home of Whitney Montgomery, Poet — 1.4 mi
• Hopewell Cemetery — 5.7 mi
• Winkler — 6.3 mi
• Hopewell Baptist Church — 6.7 mi