Osage Cemetery

The Handbook of Texas says the town of Osage took its name either from the Osage Indians or from the osage orange, or bois d'arc, trees that grew thickly there. Settlement began about 1860 on Bluff Creek near the McLennan County line. The post office ran from 1878 until 1965, and the school until 1947, when it merged with Crawford. The town had several general stores, a gin and a blacksmith until a fire destroyed the businesses in 1936. A Baptist church there has been in continuous use for more than a century.

What the plaque says

Osage Cemetery Residents of the Osage community began using this site as a burial place about the mid-1870s, soon after area settlement began. Though the presence of unmarked burials indicates possible earlier usage, the first marked burial, that of R. P. Doherty, dates to 1874. Although used by the community, the graveyard was privately owned by real estate surveyor and investor Luther Kimbell and his sister Josephine Kimbell during its early years, and was not legally designated a cemetery until 1885. That year, Josephine Kimbell had a cemetery platted around the existing graves and began commercial operation of the cemetery. In 1892, Luther Kimbell assumed responsibility for the graveyard, which he operated for the rest of his life. The Osage Cemetery contains over 800 marked and unmarked graves, including those of Osage's earliest settlers and veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II,and th Koren War. It has been maintained by the Osage Cemetery Association since 1970. The only cemetery to have served this community, the historic burial ground is a tangible reminder of the area's pioneer heritage. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 14 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.
• Bosque Museum — 18 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 24 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 26 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

• Moore, John Creed — steps away
• Canaan Baptist Church — 2.6 mi
• St. John Lutheran Church — 2.9 mi
• Prairie Chapel School — 3.3 mi