Guiceland Cemetery

Guiceland, off U.S. 287 and Highway 19 four miles north of Grapeland, was a farming community established before 1900, the Handbook of Texas says. In the mid-1930s it had two churches, a cemetery and a number of houses, and local children went to school in Grapeland. After World War II many residents moved away, and by the mid-1960s only a church, a cemetery and a few widely scattered houses were left. In the early 1990s Guiceland was a dispersed rural community. A separate state marker in the cemetery honors Joseph T. Bowman, a signer of the Goliad Declaration.

What the plaque says

Guiceland Cemetery This cemetery was established about 1871, when William Guice, infant son of Benjamin and Caston Dania Guice, was buried on family land. The oldest tombstone is that of George W. Brightman (1830-1877). Hundreds of members of the Guiceland Community are buried here, including veterans of the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. A one-room building at the site served as a school and location for funeral services until 1908. A tabernacle built in 1936 was replaced by a new building in 1959. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 13 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.
• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Joseph T. Bowman — steps away
• Jane Dotson Lively — 3.0 mi
• "Slocum Massacre" — 4.3 mi
• Site of the McClean Massacre — 4.7 mi