Old Perry Cemetery

Perry's history changes depending on who tells it. The plaque says a destructive 1873 storm sent residents to New Perry, two miles east, and that the settlement moved to the site of Moody in 1881 when the Santa Fe arrived. The City of Moody's own history says Perry was devastated by a tornado in 1926 and that most businesses, churches and families then relocated to the railroad town. The accounts do not agree. Schoolteacher Jane Leach's 1854 burial was the first here, and the cemetery is all that remains of the original site.

What the plaque says

Old Perry Cemetery This cemetery was established to serve the pioneer settlers of the Perry community. The first burial her was that of Jane Leach,a schoolteacher who died in 1854. Perry was the site of several stores, a gin, school, union church, and a post office. Following a destructive 1873 storm, the residents moved to the townsite of New Perry (2 mi E). The settlement was relocated at the present site of Moody (2 mi SW) in 1881 when Santa Fe Rail lines were completed to the area. Only this cemetery remains at the original site of the Perry Community. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 6.6 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.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 17 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.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 20 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 20 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Moody — 1.7 mi
• Moody — 1.9 mi
• First Baptist Church of Eddy — 6.5 mi
• Moody-Leon United Methodist Church — 6.7 mi