Mt. Hope Cemetery

The Handbook of Texas describes Mount Hope as a community that grew up around an early church at about the time of the Civil War, on U.S. 69 just north of Wells. A school was operating there by 1896, when it enrolled 74 students. In the mid-1930s the community still had its church, its school and a number of houses, but the school later closed. By the early 1990s the Handbook found only the cemetery and a few scattered houses. The graveyard is the part of Mount Hope that remained.

What the plaque says

Mt. Hope Cemetery Joseph and Mary Bowman were married in Tennessee in the early 1800s. They moved their family to Missouri, then Mississippi and finally came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin's colony. Joseph, John J. (1807-1890) and James H. (1820-1886) Bowman fought in the Texas War for Independence from Mexico. James H. Bowman never married. In 1875 he offered one hundred acres of land to the Rev. W. D. Lewis (1819-1898) of the Barsola community to come to Mt. Hope community and establish a Methodist church at that location. Bowman gave adjacent land for a cemetery. The Rev. Mr. Lewis accepted his proposal. In November 1875, Mrs. Margaret (Ruby) Hicks, the wife of farmer Jasper Hicks and mother of Jess Hicks, died and was the first person to be interred on this site. The church was moved to nearby Wells after the railroad came through in 1886, the year that James H. Bowman was interred in Mt. Hope Cemetery. Among the early settlers buried here are members of the Bailey, Beasley, Bowman, Chapmon, Creekmore, Chandler, Cravens, Dubose, Doyle, Humphrey, Falvey, Hillencamp, Hicks, Lees, Lockhart, Luce, Lewis, Ruby, Spinks, Shamess, Stokes, Sneed, Sessions and Tyra families. Those interred here include area farmers and ranchers, teachers, doctors, business and civic leaders, and elected officials including former mayors, county commissioners and state legislators. Of the more than 1800 people interred on 13.2 acres at the dawn of the 21st century, more than two hundred were veterans of major wars and military conflicts, including eight Confederate veterans. The cemetery is a memorial to the pioneers of this area. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 13 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• James H. Bowman — steps away
• John Joseph Bowman — steps away
• Site of Kilraven — 2.1 mi
• Site of the Town of Mount Sterling — 6.1 mi