Ladonia Cemetery

The Presbyterian half of Ladonia Cemetery began as a church-and-school lot. A 1987 history by Leroy Byers and Muriel Burleson says John Nail and his wife deeded the tract for one dollar to three elders of the New Hope Cumberland Presbyterian congregation, who were to build a two-story house, worship upstairs and school below. A bell hauled by wagon from Jefferson in 1871 was tolled at funerals. The building came down in 1875 or 1876. In 1976 the Presbytery of Trinity conveyed the burial ground to the Ladonia Cemetery Association.

What the plaque says

Ladonia Cemetery The principal burial ground for members of the Ladonia community, this graveyard has historically been divided into two sections: The I.O.O.F. (Odd Fellows) Cemetery and the Presbyterian Cemetery. The oldest recorded grave, that of Joe Shelby (d. 1866), infant daughter of J. E. and S. T. Shelby, is located in the Presbyterian Cemetery section. Also in that section is the "Stranger's Tomb," marking the grave of an unknown traveler who died in October 1867. Another early burial is that of William Lovelace Foster (1830-1869), Civil War veteran and pastor of Ladonia's first Baptist church at the time of his death. The I.O.O.F. section of the cemetery was originally maintained by the local Odd Fellows Lodge. The earliest recorded grave there is that of Mrs. P. T. (Marie) Hockaday (1838-1881). The Lodge continued to care for its section of the cemetery until about 1902, when management of the two sections of the graveyard were merged. Those interred in the Ladonia Cemetery include veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, as well as early settlers of the area, Fannin County officials, and many generations of Ladonia citizens. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 17 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.
• 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.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 22 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 27 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.

More markers nearby

• Bethel Lodge No. 134 A. F. & A. M. — steps away
• Ladonia — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Ladonia — 0.3 mi
• Little Bethel Baptist Church — 0.6 mi