Historical Marker

Laurel Hill Cemetery

Coldspring, San Jacinto County · Texas

Erected 1973

Three Smith family stones here carry a mystery that Bob Bowman wrote up. Robert E. Smith, 23 and four months home from the Civil War, was buried January 21, 1869. His stone says he was assassinated, and Bowman reports his body lay by the family's plantation gate with his head on his horse's saddle. His father died that June, and the monument says he never smiled again. Edith, 17, was buried in 1872; her mother's inscription blames an experiment in surgery. Bowman says the son's death was never solved and may have been an accident.

What the plaque says

Laurel Hill Cemetery Site given 1848. Named for laurel trees that grew around baptismal pool of Laurel Hill Baptist Church. Site was given by Gen. James B. Davis (1790-1859), adjutant-general of Republic of Texas army in 1842. Cemetery was opened for use in 1840s. Oldest gravestone is that of Frances California Snow, who died in 1854 at age two. Her father, physician Thomas Snow, was buried here in 1858; site donor, Gen. Davis, the next year. When present fencing was done, G. R. McKellar donated a small strip of land on north side and heirs of Dr. D. McCardell gave a nine-foot strip on the south. (1973)

Where it stands

30.59685, -95.12535 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

Huntsville State Park — 24 mi
A Walker County pine-forest park on Lake Raven, built from 1937 by a Civilian Conservation Corps company of African American veterans, with 21 miles of trails and 160 campsites.
Sam Houston Memorial Museum — 27 mi
A 15-acre Huntsville campus with Sam Houston's Woodland Home and the Steamboat House where he died in 1863, a museum, an education center gallery and free grounds open dawn to dusk.
Texas Prison Museum — 29 mi
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