McAlpine Cemetery

The plaque's community of Wallace's Prairie points to an earlier settler who lies in this ground. Caleb Wallace was one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, and in 1828 he took a league on Beason Creek in what is now southern Grimes County. His home served as a polling place for the alcalde election of December 1830, and he enlisted in the Texas army in June 1836. The 1840 tax roll listed him with 3,328 patented acres and eight enslaved people. He died in 1844 and was buried at Fairview, this cemetery's community name.

What the plaque says

McAlpine Cemetery About 1851 North Carolina native Dugald McAlpine (1795-1876) moved here to the pioneer community of Wallace's Prairie and purchased a large tract of land. Adjacent to his property and at this location were four burial sites associated with his neighbor's nearby "Alta Vista" (Spanish for Fair View) farm and farmhouse. McAlpine eventually bought Alta Vista and in 1866 his relative, Malcomb McAlpine, was the first of many McAlpines to be buried here. In 1873 the community's name was changed to Whitehall for George White, the postmaster at that time. Before his burial here in 1876, McAlpine fenced an area around the grave sites for use as a family graveyard. In 1886 descendants of McAlpine deeded three acres containing the graveyard for cemetery purposes. Eventually community burials began outside of the fenced McAlpine section on land donated by a Mr. Johnson. Descendants of people buried here organized and formed the Fairview Cemetery Association in 1949; the name of the association was later changed to the Whitehall-Fairview Cemetery Association. Burials here include former slaves, McAlpine family members, area civic leaders, and veterans of wars ranging from the Civil War to the Vietnam Conflict. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Navasota — 9.5 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 11 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• White Hall School — 0.3 mi
• Jared Ellison Groce — 2.9 mi
• Lynn Grove United Methodist Church — 3.9 mi
• Stoneham Methodist Church — 4.4 mi