Rice Cemetery

The cemetery may hold some of an 1877 colony. A Navarro County history says a trainload of settlers from New York and New Jersey reached Rice that year, woke to snow, and some left. It cites an 1912 letter naming Frank Ketchum, a young farmer from that colony, as about the first person buried in the cemetery. The same history lists Confederate veterans J. S. Scott, 1842 to 1922, and George F. Humble, 1834 to 1912, among the buried. The plaque dates the burial ground to a grant in 1868.

What the plaque says

Rice Cemetery The Rice community was settled during the late 1860s and was named for William Marsh Rice, who donated land for the town's railroad station and later founded Rice University. In 1868, the citizens of the community were granted land for a cemetery by the trustees of the William M. Rice interests. Originally located about one and one-half miles south, the Rice Cemetery was removed to this site during the 1870s. The three original cemetery trustees, William D. Haynie, John A. Clopton, and Isaac B. Sessions, are buried in the oldest, or northern, section of the graveyard. That section also contains many burial sites that are marked only with small rock fragments or similar material. Rice Cemetery contains marked graves of numerous war veterans, including that of Joseph Calloway Bartlett, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence. In addition, four participants in the Civil War, two Spanish-American War veterans, and numerous World War I and II veterans also are interred here. Tombstones reflect the high infant mortality rate of the 1880s and the early 20th-century flu epidemic. A good example of a pioneer graveyard, the Rice Cemetery is an important part of Navarro County's recorded history. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 12 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.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 22 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Haynie Memorial Methodist Church — 0.8 mi
• Rice — 0.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Rice — 0.9 mi
• Alma — 3.7 mi