Stranger's Rest Cemetery

Historian G. Franklin Weeks found a deed of June 26, 1905, by which a lumber company conveyed one acre to the Colored People's Cemetery. Recovery began when George Freeman, a Lufkin Industries employee, alerted Weeks to the overgrown site. Dean Leggett and Don Waltz surveyed it, and the city cleared brush. Four Baptist churches, among them Greater Shiloh and New Zion, gave money. The last recorded burial, Norris Patton in 1946, has a military marker, and Weeks believes burials continued into the 1950s. The state marker was unveiled February 29, 1996.

What the plaque says

Stranger's Rest Cemetery R. D. Holland, Sydney Hackney, and S. D. Long, trustees of an Angelina County African American cemetery group, acquired one acre here from the Lufkin Land & Timber Co., in 1905. Recorded burials began in 1901. The graveyard was first known as Frost Cemetery but according to local tradition began to be called Stranger's Rest Cemetery about 1915 because of the large number of drifters buried here. The last recorded interment, that of Norris Patton, took place in 1946. The site fell into disrepair but was reclaimed by members of the local community and county volunteers in 1991-92. Sesquicentennial of texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 32 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Site of Martin Wagon Company — 1.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Lufkin — 1.5 mi
• Southland Paper Mills, Inc. — 1.5 mi
• Site of Rehearsal Hall for The Hoo Hoo Band — 1.6 mi