Manor Cemetery

The town around this cemetery took a while to settle on a name. A post office called Grassdale opened in 1859 with James Manor as postmaster but closed in 1860; another, called Gregg, opened in 1871 and took the name Manor the next year. The Houston and Texas Central built through in 1871, giving farmers easy access to markets. By the mid-1880s Manor had a district school, three churches, six general stores and 125 people shipping cotton, cottonseed and grain. It grew to about 500 by 1892 and 900 by 1914.

What the plaque says

Manor Cemetery Tennessee native James Manor, who came to Texas in the early 1830s, helped settle this area. A town named for him developled here during the 1840s. A Methodist congregation was organized in 1854 and in 1861 a Union church building was erected at this site. According to local tradition E.D. Townes, father of noted university of Texas Law School Dean and Judge John C. Townes, was among several people buried here in the 1860s. James Manor deeded the land to the community of Manor for church and cemetery purposes in 1871. The burial of Judge Williumson Jones in 1875 is the first recorded after Manor's legal donation of the land. The Methodists built a new sanctuary nearby in 1881. Manor Cemetery contains many of the area's pioneer settlers and their descendants. Among the more than one thousand people buried here are town founder James Manor (d. 1881); T.B. Wheeler, Lt. Governor of Texas from 1887 to 1891; members of fraternal organizations such as the Masons and Woodmen of the World; and veterans of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The cemetery contains a separate Hispanic/Catholic section and is maintained by an association of descendands of people buried here. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 11 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 11 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 12 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• City of Manor — 0.3 mi
• Clayton Vocational Institute — 0.7 mi
• Decker United Methodist Church and Community — 4.5 mi
• St. John Church — 5.5 mi