Smith Cemetery

The Smiths' neighbors at Oakalla built their schools and churches slowly. Methodists met in the schoolhouse until March 1923, when C. W. Tedder and his mother, Mary, gave land for a church, built in 1925. In 1920 the wooden school was torn down and a two-room school built of stone salvaged from the old Rock School on Gregory Branch; two more rooms followed in 1929. High school students went to Briggs in 1946 and the younger children in 1956. Both the Baptist and Methodist churches were still active in 1990.

What the plaque says

Smith Cemetery James Gibson Smith Jr., a native of Tennessee, married Sarah A. James, a native of Arkansas, soon after settling this part of Burnet County in 1850. Together they raised eight children and set aside this site as the family cemetery. Their granddaughter, Anita Fay Smith, who died of diptheria in 1901, was the first person to be buried here. A neighbor, Charles McLean (d. 1901) was the second person buried here followed by James G. Smith (d. 1902). A cemetery association formed by Smith descendents in 1981 maintains this site which includes veterens of the Civil War and World War II. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 14 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 24 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.
• Inks Lake State Park — 28 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 29 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Oakalla — 3.3 mi
• The Community of Briggs — 5.9 mi
• Prairie View Cemetery — 7.9 mi
• Clear Creek Baptist Church — 8.6 mi