Forest Academy Cemetery

The cemetery is what remains of a Methodist neighborhood. The Handbook of Texas says the community grew in the early 1850s around a combined church and school in dense forest, and that its families, almost all Methodist, held revival meetings every summer in a large open-air church until the early 1900s. A public school there enrolled sixty children in 1905. The Handbook has a church, a cemetery and a few houses standing in the early 1930s and only the church and cemetery by the early 1960s, later than the plaque's 1910 date for the departure.

What the plaque says

Forest Academy Cemetery This cemetery was not formally set aside until 1858. But the land probably was used as a burial ground prior to that time. Settlement of the area began in 1847 when Thomas Madison and Elizabeth (Fanning) Ticer brought their family here. Thomas Ticer died one year later, but there is no record of his burial in the county. His wife was interred in this graveyard in 1879. The first known marked grave in Forest Academy Cemetery is that of Martha McCorkle, who died in 1858. In the same year, Winship S. Petty (1804-1881) bought 865.5 acres of land in Hopkins County. Since this burial ground was a part of that acreage, he donated it to the Forest Academy community and increased the area of the cemetery to six acres. Petty later supplied the lumber from his sawmill in Angelina County to build the first community church and school building. Petty is interred here in an unmarked site. By 1910 the families who lived in this area had moved, leaving only the Methodist Church building and this cemetery as reminders of this early agricultural settlement. The burial ground was vandalized in 1971, which destroyed many of the old grave markers. It continues to stand, however, as an important element in the region's heritage. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 21 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Shooks Chapel Methodist Church — 5.9 mi
• St. Philip's Episcopal Church — 6.3 mi
• Union Communiity — 6.7 mi
• Morning Chapel Missionary Baptist Church — 7.0 mi