Whitt Cemetery

Whitt was a stagecoach town that the railroads bypassed. The Handbook of Texas says settlement began in the early to mid-1870s on the stage line between Weatherford and Jacksboro, and postal service began in 1877. By the mid-1880s Whitt had about 150 residents, three churches, a school, a weekly paper called the Whitt Moon and twenty businesses, with two steam gristmills and a cotton gin. The Half-Way House hotel took its name from its spot on the stage run. Whitt reached 500 by 1900, then declined as railroads bypassed it.

What the plaque says

Whitt Cemetery The town of Whitt was officially established in 1877, but permanent settlement in this area had been taking place since about 1855. Originally a farming community, Whitt became a stagecoach stop for people traveling between Weatherford and Jacksboro. It later developed into a regional education center with the presence of two colleges, Whitt Seminary and Parker Institute, which operated here between 1881 and 1990. Between 1876 and 1879, Oscar Grantham donated land to the community for burial purposes. The graveyard has served as a community burial ground since at least 1879. The oldest marked burial, that of Margaret A. Gipson, dates to that year, but the presence of more than 100 unmarked graves suggests that the cemetery was active prior to that time. J.N. and M.L. Johnston made additional land donations over the years to enlarge the cemetery. Now over eight acres in size, the cemetery has more than 1,000 graves. Among those buried here are pioneer settlers and veterans of the Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I and II, Korea, and Vietnam. Since 1990, the graveyard has been maintained by a cemetery association. It is an important cultural resource in the area. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 10 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 19 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 20 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.
• Wise County Courthouse — 31 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.

More markers nearby

• Whitt Seminary — steps away
• Site of the Home of Oliver Loving in 1855 — 3.6 mi
• Authon Cemetery — 7.7 mi
• Black Springs — 8.3 mi