The Stoneham Cemetery

The plaque ends with the railroad renaming the town in 1879; the Handbook of Texas follows Stoneham from there. A post office opened in 1890, a Beaumont company laid out the present townsite in 1901, and Polish immigrants organized St. Joseph's Catholic Church in 1909. The next year Black Methodists built the Stonehamville Methodist Episcopal Church a mile south of town, after years of worship in a brush arbor near this cemetery. Fire took the business district in 1932, and by 1970 about twelve people lived here, with no businesses left.

What the plaque says

The Stoneham Cemetery Franklin Jarvis Greenwood (1804-1882), who came to Texas in 1829, donated land for this cemetery. It was originally called "High Point" for a nearby settlement. The first known interments were Greenwood's daughters Mary Anne (b. 1840) and Harriet. They died in 1856 of cholera. Graves of yellow fever victims were specially marked to avoid spread of the epidemic. Many burials are descendants of Stephen F. Austin colonists. The name of the cemetery and town changed to "Stoneham" after John H. Stoneham (1829-1894) gave land for the railroad in 1879. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 9.4 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 10 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 14 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Andrew Jackson Montgomery — steps away
• John Montgomery — steps away
• Stoneham Methodist Church — 1.4 mi
• Education in Plantersville — 4.0 mi