Bethlehem Cemetery

Roane is buried at Bethlehem Cemetery, a small country cemetery on the outskirts of Brenham, Texas that is hundreds of years old.  It is a Texas Historical Cemetery.  It is a beautiful, quiet cemetery near our ranch on a hilltop where one can see miles around.  As an added blessing, you can see our house and ranch a few miles away from the cemetery – we even get to pass by the cemetery as we go to our ranch.  While we did not know it at the time, we took bluebonnet pictures with all of the kids in Spring 2016 before Roane went to Heaven.  In short, it’s the perfect spot for the perfect son.  

If you’re in the area, please go visit the cemetery and meander around the old gravestones, live oaks, and cedar trees.  Take a seat on a bench and just relax and be still and know that God is The God of the Universe.  Or write a note to Roane and put it on his green mailbox (located on his grave).           

While it is a long story, Shane is now the “caretaker/manager” of the cemetery, a title and responsibility that he never would imagine of holding.  The maintenance and operation of the cemetery operates on donations, so if you want to donate, please send a check to Bethlehem Cemetery Association at Burton State Bank (515 North Main, Burton, Texas 77835).  What we have found out that historically the cemetery held picnics once or twice a year to raise funds for the upkeep of the cemetery.  We may try to restart this old practice.   

Our plan is to build a gazebo/pavilion at the cemetery in honor or Roane.  Because Roane went to Heaven on Father’s Day weekend, our plan is to hold an annual remembrance event on that weekend for all friends and family members (or folks we don’t even know yet) for us to remember Roane and remember that each day we’re given is precious, our lives here on Earth our short, and as Christians our real “home” is in Heaven.  We will have watermelon and BlueBell ice cream – Roane’s favorite two desserts.  

Directions to Cemetery:  From Brenham, take Hwy 389 West from Hwy 290.  After about 6 miles, take a right on Boehnemann Road.  The cemetery will be on your right after about 2 miles.

The Story

Bethlehem Cemetery in south Washington County, Texas, is a cemetery containing persons and their family members who were among the very first Anglo-American settlers to Stephen F. Austin’s colony, the “old three hundred.”  The Allcorn (sometimes spelled Alcorn) family, who have family members in this cemetery, were the second Anglo family to arrive in present Washington County spending the last night of 1821 by a creek they subsequently named with dawn, “New Year’s Creek.”  Bethlehem Cemetery is located on five and three-fourths acres of the original Josiah Lester League in Washington County, a headright league granted to Lester by the Mexican government and later conveyed by him to Erwin Brown.  It was Erwin Brown, in turn, who conveyed the five and three-fourths acre parcel on August 13, 1851, to the trustees of the Bethlehem Academy for the purpose of a settlement school and house of worship for the Baptist and Methodist denominations. The first trustees receiving the deed were James C. Crenshaw, James Lane, Leander Burns, Willis Johnson, and I. M. Harris.

     The site soon also became a “burial place for the neighborhood”, as cited in an officially recorded agreement signed April 14, 1873, between the Bethlehem trustees and one J. E. Gray for erecting a fence around the cemetery. Trustees were then A. Sauls? (unclear), J. H. Allcorn, S. D. Carrothers, and Jas. R. Allcorn.

     The first burial for which there is an extant marker was that of Susan J. Burdett, age 39, who died in 1852 (though Henry Burdett, age about 65, may have died earlier; his tombstone gives only his age and not date of death).

     Other early burials with extant markers were Nancy Burdett (Henry’s wife), who died in 1857 at age 72; Mary Houchin, who died in 1855 at age 57; Gesse Fincher, who died in 1857 at age of 35; and the infant Rufus Mallet, who died in 1859.

     By the time the fence contract had been awarded to Mr. Gray in 1873, at least 13 marked graves which still exist were added and probably a large number that were unmarked or have since deteriorated were there.  Extant markers show six persons in the cemetery who were born in the 1700’s, Nancy Burdett being the first, born in 1785 before the constitution of the United States was adopted.  Five persons were born between 1800-1820, who were born before the Republic of Texas was created; eight were born before the Civil War.

     Names that appear in the older section of the cemetery include those of Allcorn, Armstrong, Arnett, Awalt, Barnhill, Beckermann, Benker, Bowers, Bernshausen, Brinkmann, Burdett, Carothers, Crenshaw, Dempsey, Doerntge, Fincher, Green, Hopf, Houchin, Jeurges, Jurries, Klatt, Light, McKenzie, Mallet, Nunn, Peters, Rost, Sanders, Simms, Smith, Valenta, Waltz, Wendt, Wheeles, and Woods.  Many of these older names are easily recognizable as early Anglo-American settler types of English names, while others came with the second wave of immigration, the central Europeans. The Caruthers (sic) family and the Woods families were on the first (1837) tax roll of Washington County. The Houchin's were there by 1837. Thomas Nunn came from Georgia to the Republic of Texas before 1842 (probably 1840). William Barnhill came by 1833.  As cited earlier, Elijah Allcorn and his family group were the earliest of settlers in the area: his grandson, John Hodge Allcorn, is buried in the cemetery.  Elijah himself was no stranger in the community, as shown by his appearance on the probate records of Berry Humphries, a resident of the community, to whom Elijah owed a note of $73.75 at the time of Humphries’ death June 21, 1861.  

     The following persons who are buried in the cemetery appear on the 1860 census just prior to the Civil War: Martin Armstrong, Samuel Arnett, John Allcorn, Silvia Armstrong, Jackson Barnhill, Mary Barnhill, and Thomas Nunn. Berry Humphries and his wife Amanda, also on that census, are believed buried next to their friend and business associate Thomas Nunn: A handmade stone with the letters “B. H. H.” has recently been raised there from its sunken state.  Humphries, probably like many of his neighbors, participated in the Somervell Campaign of 1842, for which he received a Republic of Texas check in the amount of $45.00.

     Several other family names on the census appear in the cemetery: Bowers, Green, Carothers, Crenshaw, Fincher, Addison, Burdett (son of Henry Burdett and brother to Susan Burdett, buried in the cemetery), Simms, Mallets, and Woods. Little Rufus Mallets, one of the earliest burials with an extant headstone, appears on the 1860 mortality census (1859 deaths): he died of the “flux” in November, 1859, at the age of one. Also on that mortality census were members of the Armstrong, Crenshaw, Barnhill, Woods, Bowers and Sanders families--- most of them infants, who may have been buried without headstones in many cases. It is a sad commentary on the infant mortality rate of the day to read that census. 

     One recent addition to the list of old markers is a homemade tombstone hand lettered “Jim 1866”. Whoever Jim was, he did not survive the Civil War by much. This stone was also dug from its near sunken state.

     Many of these early settlers came to Texas by the southern migration route that began in Virginia and went steadily southward through the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and other newer and lower southern pioneer states. The Allcorn's, Burdett's, Carothers, Humphries, and Nunn's came most recently from Georgia; the Armstrong's from the Carolinas; the Sanders from Alabama; but like the Simms, nearly all of them had multiple southern state origins within their families.(7)  

     Many of these families intermarried, as might be expected in a lonely and relatively isolated colony group.  Martin Armstrong was married to Julia A. Simms Feb. 13, 1858; A. Carothers married Martha Burdett Feb. 12, 1850; A. J. Barnhill married Margaret I. Houchin Dec 23, 1852. Mary Houchin is listed on her tombstone as the “consort of John Houchin.”  She died Nov. 5, 1855, at the age of 57 years and was probably the mother of Margaret I., who married A. J. Barnhill.

     From the marriage records, whole patterns of kinship in the cemetery can be established.  The Armstrong’s, Wood's, and Simms intermarried, as did the Simms also with the Arnett’s and Burdett’s.  The Burdett’s married Carothers and Fincher's also, and the Carothers were related to the Crenshaw’s.

     The persons in this cemetery were a tight-knit group who intermarried and depended upon each other in close kinship units until many fanned out later into newer territory again. 

     Evidence that many families moved on is available in infant graves with no surrounding family and predominance later of middle European-style names in the newer part of the cemetery.

     Bethlehem Cemetery is now a beautiful, spacious, old (and new) cemetery, located on the very top of a high rolling hill that overlooks the Mill Creek valley, home to the earliest of the Anglo-Texans settlers.

     Some of these earliest of settlers belonged within one lifetime to the Republic of Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America—and some a second time to the United States of America. John Hodge Allcorn is the only person in the cemetery whose grave is decorated with the “CSA” designation, though a number of others probably served in the Confederate armies. His descendants made it very clear that he served: he belonged to “Company F, the 21st regiment of the Texas Cavalry, the Confederate States Army.”

     Today the cemetery is in a remarkably attractive condition. Several plots are enclosed still by their original wrought iron fences, standing guard after all these years.  The feeling of the cemetery is one of quiet, rural peace and endurance.

     The cemetery was restored by a group of citizens banded together at nearby Greenvine Lutheran Church March 6, 1988.  Donations were taken at this first meeting and one man hired to rid the site of the major obstructions. Then citizens literally lined up shoulder to shoulder and cut their way into the jungle with chain saws.  A couple of years prior to that some persons crawling through the brambles, briars, and brush, and snake holes, seeking an ancestor’s tombstone, were trapped and got out only by tearing up clothes and skin—the older part of the cemetery had gotten to that state. After the chain saw crews’ attack, men, women and children followed up against the brush, weeds, and trash, carefully working around the old tombstones and iron fences. Anyone viewing the cemetery today will have a hard time imagining what it was like three years ago.

     The Bethlehem Cemetery group makes this application to the state of Texas for a historical marker for following reasons: this is, no doubt one of the more historical cemeteries of the state, both for its location and for the pioneers buried in it; these pioneers gave so much to the Republic and to the state that they are deserving of respect and perpetual remembrance; and a historical marker will contribute toward protecting this site from future neglect and any future vandalism.

     Present day and future citizens need to know who built this state and where its origins lie; and they need occasionally to stop and visit these peoples graves in this lovely place.  Bethlehem Cemetery is today part of what remains of colonial Texas.