Stewart Cemetery

Ridgeway, the nearest town, grew up around the railroad. The Handbook of Texas says it took its name from a pioneer family and from its position on a ridge between White Oak Creek and the Sulphur River. A store opened in 1887 for the railroad construction crew, and a post office followed in 1888 with J. A. Leeman as postmaster. By 1890 it had two general stores, three mills and gins, two blacksmiths and a druggist. The cemetery's last burial, in 1915, came while Ridgeway was still near its peak.

What the plaque says

Stewart Cemetery Located on land originally belonging to early Hopkins County settler Zacharias Birdwell (1801-1880), the nearby cemetery was first known as Birdwell's Graveyard. The earliest marked grave, that of infant James Becton Herman, is dated 1879, but the site was used as early as 1870. In 1882 Birdwell's widow, Polly, deeded land, including the cemetery, to her nephew W. A. Stewart. The burial ground, which soon became known as Stewart Cemetery, contains 23 marked graves, including that of Zacharias Birdwell. It was last used in 1915 for the burial of Mary E. Casey. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 11 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 20 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 35 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Oakland Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 0.4 mi
• Mt. Zion Churches and Cemetery — 4.0 mi
• Site of Plunkett School — 5.8 mi
• Abel Morgan — 6.8 mi