Live Oak Cemetery

Youngsport sits on the Lampasas River, far from any harbor. The Handbook says Michael Young, reputedly a former ship's captain, is said to have named the site Young's port, and also offers P. G. Young, the town's hotel keeper in 1884, as a possible namesake. A wagon train of 106 people led by Joel Cosper arrived in 1870 and the post office opened in 1871. By 1884 Youngsport shipped cotton and had two gins, a hotel, flour and corn mills and three churches. The post office closed in 1930.

What the plaque says

Live Oak Cemetery Although an inventory of marked gravesites indicates that the first person buried here was Michael Young, local tradition claims that distinction actually belongs to Young's daughter. She is believed to have died of sickness near this location during the family's westward journey from Alabama and buried here prior to her father's interment in 1875. At that time, this particular piece of land was still state public land. It was not until 1886 that it passed into the private ownership of John O. Rhea. The first legal documentation of Live Oak Cemetery is contained in a deed transfering 3.9 acres of land for cemetery purposes from a subsequent owner, P.C. Mitchell, to cemetery trustees in 1901. At that time the cemetery contained about 40 burials. The dates appearing on tombstones suggest that this cemetery has been in continuous use since 1875. By 1990 it contained about 435 marked and unmarked graves. This cemetery is closely associated with the community of Youngsport, reportedly named for Michael Young. Live Oak Cemetery, together with the Boone-Hamlin Cemetery, continues to actively serve the Youngsport community and is maintained by a local cemetery association. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 23 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 24 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Mother Neff State Park — 28 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Youngsport — 1.8 mi
• Maxdale Cemetery — 6.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Killeen — 6.7 mi
• Willingham Spring Baptist Church — 7.3 mi