Prairie Hill Cemetery

Prairie Hill took its name from a rise in the prairie between Christmas Creek and the Navasota River, the Handbook of Texas says. A first store, by one account Marquis Perry's, led to a post office in 1884. By 1896 about 200 people had five churches and two hotels, but the post office closed in 1906 and returned only in 1925. The town had a bank and about 300 residents in 1929. The bank failed in 1931, yet by 1933 ten businesses stood and about 500 people lived there. In 1975 the Church of Christ became a civic center.

What the plaque says

Prairie Hill Cemetery Prairie Hill Baptist Church members built a sanctuary here in 1890 on 3 acres donated by J. R. and Medora Leathers. A portion of the acreage near the sanctuary was set aside in 1894 to established this community cemetery. The first recorded burial was that of Eula Jane Howard on June 29, 1894. The Prairie Hill Cemetery Association, established in 1958 and chartered in 1975, maintains the cemetery which has been enlarged over the years. Interred here are area pioneer settlers and their descendants, and veterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War to Vietnam. 1994

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 14 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 16 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 20 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 21 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• Kirk — 6.5 mi
• Mt. Calm Methodist Church — 8.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mt. Calm — 8.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mart — 8.5 mi