Wheatville and Wheatville Cemetery

Wheatville was named for the William Wheat family, and a local history calls it the true beginning of present-day Naples. Lots around the public square sold for $100 in 1861. Early merchants included J. B. Meadows, George M. McDonald, W. B. Wright, C. A. Hinnant and R. S. Wheat and Company, and John L. Sheppard, whom the account calls a relative of the senator, ran a firm known as Sheppard and Olive. The post office had six postmasters between William L. Murphy in 1868 and Berry B. Watts in January 1880.

What the plaque says

Wheatville and Wheatville Cemetery Wheatville, named for pioneer settler William Wheat, began as a rest stop/general store on a main road to Jefferson (40 mi. SE) in the 1840s. During the 1850s a cotton gin, grist mill, school, and church were established here. A post office was opened in 1868. The first recorded burial in the community cemetery was that of John S. Sheppard in 1863. The town declined in the 1880s as businesses and residents moved to the new railroad town of Naples (3 mi. S). Wheatville native Morris Sheppard (1875-1941) served as U. S. Senator from 1913-1941. The graveyard continues to serve the area. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 15 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Atlanta State Park — 26 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.
• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 26 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.

More markers nearby

• Naples — 2.0 mi
• Hometown of United States Senator Morris Sheppard — 2.2 mi
• Rocky Branch — 8.1 mi
• Cornett Cemetery — 9.7 mi