Historical Marker
West Salado Cemetery
Salado, Bell County · Texas
Erected 1990
West Salado is listed by the Texas Freedom Colonies Project as a settlement of people freed from slavery, with its founding year unknown and no community history written yet. The Project's version of the marker text says the 1879 deed for church, school and burial ground went to John Sanders, a freedman of color, from the wife of Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson. The plaque names Robertson himself. Jozie Fulbright, who died in 1877, is the earliest documented grave. The school and a church building that held up to three congregations are gone.
What the plaque says
West Salado Cemetery Located in an area populated by former slaves following the Civil War, this cemetery dates to the 1870s. The earliest documented grave is that of Jozie Fulbright, who died in 1877, although according to local oral tradition there may be earlier unmarked burials. The land was officially deeded by Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson for church, school, and graveyard purposes in 1879. While the community's school and two churches are no longer in existence, the cemetery remains as an important link with the area's early black history. (1990)
Where it stands
30.95818, -97.53652 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 miThe Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
- Williamson County Courthouse — 24 miThe fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
- Inner Space Cavern — 26 miA Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
More markers nearby
- Alice Gray Hamblen — 0.4 mi
- Dodd's Creek Bridge — 0.7 mi
- Home of Wellborn Barton — 0.7 mi
- Home of Orville Thomas Tyler — 0.9 mi