Waller Cemetery

The plaque places John Waller in the 15th Texas Cavalry, a regiment with a hard war. George H. Sweet raised it in 1862 from ten mostly North Texas counties, and it mustered in at McKinney that March. Dismounted in July 1862, it fought as infantry for the rest of the war. At Arkansas Post, where at least 100 of its men died of disease, 463 were captured in January 1863. About 100 more died at Camp Douglas in Chicago before the April exchange sent the survivors east to Virginia.

What the plaque says

Waller Cemetery According to oral history, Alexander Waller was the first person to be buried at this site. He died shortly after helping his father choose the family burial ground on their land purchased in 1872. John Waller, a veteran of the 15th Texas Cavalry, and his wife Frances (Dyer), had eleven children, several of whom are buried in this cemetery. Other Confederate veterans are interred here: Thomas Cothran, Jesse Long, and Oliver Smoot. Many more Sulphur Branch community families rest here, including two African-American families originally buried outside the main cemetery. Waller Cemetery continues to serve descendants of the early residents of Sulphur Branch. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 8.9 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 — 15 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 — 21 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 — 21 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

• Blackberry Community — 3.7 mi
• Apolonia Cemetery — 4.1 mi
• Richards Colored School — 6.4 mi
• John Montgomery — 8.1 mi