Rosedale Cemetery

Gregg County's TXGenWeb project lists 17 Civil War veterans connected to Rosedale Cemetery, sixteen Confederate and one Union. The Confederates served in Texas units and in regiments from Louisiana, South Carolina and Georgia. The Union man is Sgt. James Moore Jr. of Company A, 21st Pennsylvania Cavalry (1841-1916). Manoah F. Stone of the 10th Texas Cavalry was killed in action, and Mary T. Johnson Stone Walters (1836-1906), who had been married to him first, is buried here. Samuel P. Barfield, of Georgia's Phillips Legion, lies in an unmarked grave.

What the plaque says

Rosedale Cemetery When John Kettle Armstrong and his wife Sarah bought 160 acres here in 1844, they were among the first settlers. Sarah died in 1856 and Armstrong set aside this tract for a cemetery. Tradition says the Armstrong slaves were interred outside the grounds. After Armstrong's death in 1860, his second wife Margaret Fisher married a Mr. Stewart. For years the Armstrongs and Stewarts allowed everyone to use the graveyard which was called "Stewart Cemetery." After the railroad started the town of Gladewater, a cemetery association organized in 1911 and changed the name of the graveyard to "Rosedale." An additional five acres were purchased from J. K. Armstrong and his wife. "Permits" for burial were sold instead of lots. When the East Texas oil boom began, this policy allowed all surface and mineral rights to remain with the association. In 1932 two oil wells were drilled on the burial ground. The association used the profits to build a caretaker's cottage, roads, a rock fence and to landscape the grounds. In 1973, after 41 years, the wells were plugged. Still in use, the burial ground has about 265 unmarked and 750 marked graves. Many of the older plots are covered with large red rocks. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Tyler State Park — 21 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 22 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• John Ben Shepperd — 0.9 mi
• Gladewater Lodge No. 852, A.F. & A.M. — 0.9 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Gladewater — 1.0 mi
• New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — 1.0 mi