Raleigh Cemetery

Raleigh's settlers were refugees from a ruined South, the Handbook of Texas says: the Meredith clan came from Mississippi in 1873, like others fleeing the devastated post-war South. A post office opened in 1900 and moved to Frost in 1904. In 1906 the one-teacher school had thirty-nine students. By the 1930s Raleigh had a church, a school and scattered houses, and it reported twenty residents from 1933 to 1969. The cemetery lies behind a gate on a private dirt road, so this entry gives no route.

What the plaque says

Raleigh Cemetery Raleigh Cemetery was named for the community of Raleigh, an early settlement in Navarro County. Raleigh's post office was established in 1900, and for a time the town maintained a church, grist mill, blacksmith shop and school. Although the first marked grave is that of Lauretty Frost (1852-54), Raleigh Cemetery was not mentioned in the Navarro County deed books until 1885, when A. Barry and his wife, M. E. Barry, set aside 1.5 acres of land for a burial ground. The cemetery, which is still in use, contains approximately 170 graves. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 15 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Hill County Courthouse — 25 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

More markers nearby

• Dresden Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• Dresden United Methodist Church — 1.4 mi
• Brushie Prairie Methodist Church — 3.4 mi
• Navarro Mills Community — 3.7 mi