Old Cemetery of Paris

George W. Wright lies here with all three of his wives, and the Handbook of Texas shows how much loss that ground holds. Both of his daughters died while he was away in 1836. Matilda Holman Wright died on October 4, 1848, after the birth of their sixth child. Sarah Jane Mebane Wright died in childbirth on May 22, 1853. Wright himself died on August 2, 1877, a Methodist and Mason who in 1861 owned thirty-five enslaved people. The old ground that bears his name holds his family's grief as well as the town's pioneers.

What the plaque says

Old Cemetery of Paris The old city cemetery is located on land once owned by George Washington Wright (1809-1877), founder of the city of Paris. The oldest grave here is said to be that of a free black man who worked for Wright. Although the stone is illegible, the date is thought to be 1845. The oldest legible stone marks the grave of Thomas Wortham (1776-1846). Site of the primary burial ground for Paris between 1845-1865, the plot was also referred to as Wright's Cemetery. In 1866 the Evergreen Cemetery was begun, called the New Cemetery, and many graves were exhumed and moved there. George W. Wright was buried in the Old Cemetery in 1877. A cemetery association was formed in 1879, and in 1885 Wright heirs deeded the land to its trustees. In 1922 the cemetery was deeded to the city of Paris and a standpipe was located there for the new Lake Crook Waterworks. The cemetery contains approximately 325 graves. About one hundred markers are intact, and show the majority of burials to have taken place between 1870-1910. Many early community leaders are buried here, and a granite marker honors members of the 9th Texas Infantry, C. S. A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 0.8 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 1.5 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 2.8 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 23 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Paris — 0.2 mi
• Lamar County, C. S. A. — 0.3 mi
• The Paris Fire, 1916 — 0.4 mi
• St. Paul Baptist Church — 0.4 mi