Sterling Cemetery

The plaque gives Judge Robert Calvert's cemetery and burial; the Handbook gives the life before them. Born in 1802 near present Wartrace, Tennessee, he grew up in northern Alabama, married Mary Keesee at Tuscaloosa in 1823 and in 1838 moved to Saline County, Arkansas, where he served several terms as county judge. In Texas he sat in the Fifth Legislature for Milam and Robertson counties, provisioned the Confederate army and pressed the railroad to build through the county. A Presbyterian elder, he rose quickly among the Masons to Knight Templar. He died during the 1867 yellow fever epidemic.

What the plaque says

Sterling Cemetery Burial place of some 400 Texas pioneers and descendants. On land granted (1835) to A. J. Webb; bought in 1850 by Judge Robert Calvert, a civic leader in Sterling, a town named for Empresario Sterling C. Robertson. Calvert dedicated 11.1-acre cemetery and built adjacent Cumberland Presbyterian Church of his own plantation timber. In 1867, Judge Calvert died and was buried near cemetery gate. The church building was moved by oxen to new town of Calvert (2 mi. E). In 1868, his wife, Mary Keesee Calvert, and their three daughters deeded cemetery site to the Cumberland Presbyterians. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calvert — 2.1 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 18 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.

More markers nearby

• Casimir Drugstore — 2.0 mi
• Town of Calvert — 2.0 mi
• Home Area of Chinese Farmers — 2.0 mi
• Sneed Memorial Methodist Church — 2.1 mi