Whittaker Memorial Cemetery

Seven freedmen killed on the Whitaker plantation on October 15, 1868, three years after emancipation, are believed to be buried here. According to a Cass County Now article on the marker's dedication, Ben F. Whitaker reported the killings to the Freedmen's Bureau without naming the dead. The article says an enslaved man named Immanuel and Willis Whitaker's wife Elizabeth were charter members of Mount Zion's Baptist Church of Christ. Belzora Brown Cheatham led the research that won the marker. The article counts 134 unidentified graves and about 85 family names, with Ezekiel Ross, died 1887, the earliest marked burial.

What the plaque says

Whittaker Memorial Cemetery This African American cemetery was once part of a large plantation owned by South Carolina native Willis Whitaker (Whittaker), who came to Texas in 1840 with his family and more than 50 slaves. Whitaker had acquired nearly 3000 acres by 1850; a six-acre tract of land was given as a cemetery for the slaves of the plantation. Those buried here were slaves, freed African Americans, and their descendants. The earliest graves may be those of seven Freemen killed on the plantation in 1868. An epidemic of malaria in 1896 claimed many lives, as did the diseases of smallpox and tuberculosis. It is believed that some of these victims were transported to the cemetery for mass burial. Natural disasters also took their toll; eight members of one family were killed in a wind storm in 1900. Many people were buried in unmarked graves, while others received makeshift markers and rocks as tombstones. Family members placed new headstones to replace some broken or illegible markers. Documented burials number more than 350, including educators, businessmen, and veterans. This cemetery is still in use by citizens of the area, as well as many former residents who are returned here to be buried. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Excelsior House Hotel — 11 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 11 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 16 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 17 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Taylor Cemetery — 6.4 mi
• Jefferson — 9.7 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps at Linden — 9.9 mi
• Berea Community — 10 mi