James G. Gilmer

James G. Gilmer died within months of arriving, but his land outlived him. The plaque says the town was built on the grant left to his widow Elizabeth. The Crockett Park plaque in the same town says Benjamin S. Walcott, arriving in 1848, added land of his own to his wife's legacy from James Gilmer and platted Honey Grove with Samuel Erwin. The Handbook of Texas says the town got a post office branch in 1846, reached about 300 residents by 1856, and incorporated in 1873. Honey Grove sits where a widow's inheritance was divided into lots.

What the plaque says

James G. Gilmer (1814-1846) One of the courageous men who helped civilize the wilderness. Moved here from Kentucky in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth (Parrish) and children William S., George A., and Thomas S. James P. Gilmer, the fourth son, is said to have been first Anglo-American born at present Honey Grove. A few months after he settled here, James G. Gilmer died; his burial established this cemetery. On his land grant, left to his wife, the town was later built. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 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.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 21 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 22 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

• Samuel Augustus Erwin — steps away
• Oakwood Cemetery — steps away
• James Thomas Holt — steps away
• Erwin Evans Smith — steps away