Cemeteries
Cemeteries of Montague County
Montague County holds 121 named cemeteries — an unusually dense network for a county of 937 square miles. From the 1848 frontier burial at Old Spanish Fort to active community cemeteries maintained today, these grounds chronicle nearly 170 years of settlement, ranching, farming, and oil-field life.
The oldest documented burials date to 1848 at Old Spanish Fort; the earliest formal cemetery organization began in 1862 at Montague. Together the county's burial grounds record an estimated 32,000 interments spanning 1857 to 2005.
The Montague County Cemetery Preservation Corporation (MCCPC), established in 2007, coordinates restoration and preservation efforts across the county. Dozens of these cemeteries hold Historic Texas Cemetery (HTC) designations from the Texas Historical Commission. The majority remain active, maintained by community associations and family trusts; a handful are abandoned or have lost their access roads.
Most Montague County cemeteries lie on county roads and farm-to-market routes. A number sit on private land; access requires landowner permission. The MCCPC maintains a cemetery board at montaguecountyhistory.org. Find A Grave and the THC Atlas (atlas.thc.texas.gov) are the two most complete online registries for individual burial records and HTC designations.
Briar Creek Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Briar Creek Cemetery is a frontier-era community burial ground in the Bowie area of Montague County, holding a Texas Historical Commission historical marker and documented under both Briar Creek and Briar Branch in county cemetery records.
Brush Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Brush Cemetery is a frontier-era rural burial ground in the Bowie area of Montague County, holding a Texas Historical Commission historical marker and representing the dispersed farming-community cemetery pattern that preceded Bowie's railroad-era growth.
Center Point Cemetery — Saint Jo Area, Texas
Center Point Cemetery (also known as Fairview Cemetery) is a community burial ground in the Saint Jo area of Montague County with 581 documented memorials — one of three principal cemeteries serving the Saint Jo municipality.
Dye Mound Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Dye Mound Cemetery is a frontier-era rural burial ground near Saint Jo, associated with the Dye Mound Church and Dye Mound School — a composite community site documented by a Texas Historical Commission marker. The cemetery component is the burial ground that receives this spoke; the church and school are covered in prose.
Elmwood Cemetery — Bowie, Texas
Elmwood Cemetery is Bowie's principal municipal burial ground — the largest cemetery in Montague County, with more than 8,000 documented memorials, an 1880 founding tied to the Fort Worth & Denver Railway, and Depression-era stonework that still lines Patterson and Nelson Streets.
Illinois Bend Memorial Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Illinois Bend Memorial Cemetery is a frontier-era community burial ground on FM 677 in northwestern Montague County, connected to the 1863 Comanche raid on the Illinois Bend settlement and anchored by a Texas Historical Commission marker erected in 2013.
Lindale Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Lindale Cemetery is a rural community burial ground along the FM 1758 corridor in the Bowie area of Montague County, documented by a Texas Historical Commission Historic Texas Cemetery designation (HTC) and held in county records since at least the late 19th century.
McGrady Cemetery — Saint Jo, Texas
McGrady Cemetery near Saint Jo was established in the 1860s following the death of a McGrady family employee killed by Indians on the family farm — one of the few Montague County cemeteries with a documented Indian-raid founding event, anchored by a Texas Historical Commission marker erected in 1991.
Molsbee Chapel Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Molsbee Chapel Cemetery began as a family graveyard in 1888 when 20-year-old Orville Molsbee died, was deeded as a community burial ground in 1942, and holds a Texas Historical Commission marker documenting Confederate soldiers and Armed Forces veterans among its interments.
Montague Catholic Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Montague Catholic Cemetery was established in 1900 for the county's Italian immigrant Catholic community, with the first burial recorded in 1901. More than 250 marked and unmarked graves document Italian, German, Polish, and Hispanic families, and the cemetery holds an HTC designation from the Texas Historical Commission (2016).
Montague Cemetery — County Seat, Montague, Texas
Montague Cemetery is one of Montague County's oldest burial grounds — established in 1862 by James M. Gibbons for his wife's burial, containing approximately 60+ legible 19th-century tombstones including Confederate veterans and early Texas Rangers, and marked by the Texas Historical Commission in 1985.
Mountain Park Cemetery — Saint Jo, Texas
Mountain Park Cemetery is the principal municipal burial ground of Saint Jo, Texas — the largest of three Saint Jo–area cemeteries, with 2,218 documented memorials on FM 677 in northern Montague County.
Nocona City Cemetery — Nocona, Texas
Nocona City Cemetery is one of Montague County's oldest and largest burial grounds — pre-dating county formation in 1857, carrying the Historic Texas Cemetery designation, and documenting nearly 6,000 interments across the frontier, cattle-trail, boot-industry, and oil-boom eras of north-central Texas.
Old Spanish Fort Cemetery — Spanish Fort, Texas
Old Spanish Fort Cemetery occupies ground among the most historically layered in Montague County — an Anglo-era burial ground established in the 1840s at the ghost-town site of Spanish Fort, adjacent to the 1759 battlefield where Taovaya village defenders repelled Spanish colonial forces. The cemetery preserves early frontier-era interments and sits on land of deep archaeological sensitivity.
Perryman Cemetery — Forestburg, Texas
Perryman Cemetery near Forestburg in northwestern Montague County has served the community since 1862. Its Texas Historical Commission marker documents an Indian raid victim, two Confederate soldiers captured at Lookout Mountain, and the 1883 donation to Montague County by Levi Perryman — sheriff, Confederate veteran, and the civic leader whose name the cemetery still carries.
Pleasant Hill Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Pleasant Hill Cemetery is a rural community burial ground on the FM 1749 corridor in central-southern Montague County — one of at least five cemeteries along this agricultural road and a physical marker of the dispersed 19th-century settlement pattern that shaped the county's interior townships.
Saint Jo Head of Elm Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Saint Jo Head of Elm Cemetery is a frontier-era burial ground near Saint Jo, associated with the historic Head of Elm campsite documented by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy in 1849 and later by cattle drovers on the Chisholm Trail — one of the most historically layered locations in Montague County.
Scrougy / Prospect Cemetery — Montague County, Texas
Scrougy Cemetery — also recorded as Prospect Cemetery — is a rural community burial ground on the FM 1749 corridor in central-southern Montague County. Its unusual name, multi-alias history, and position among five documented cemeteries on a single farm road make it a distinctive marker of the dispersed agricultural settlement that shaped this part of the county.
Starkey Cemetery — Saint Jo Area, Texas
Starkey Cemetery near Saint Jo is one of three principal burial grounds serving the US-82 corridor community in eastern Montague County. With 678 documented Find A Grave memorials and a 91% photography rate, it is among the better-documented rural cemeteries in the county — a well-preserved community burial ground whose founding family history and exact establishment date remain open research questions.
Sunset Cemetery — Sunset, Texas
Sunset Cemetery was formally organized in 1894 and serves the Sunset community in southeastern Montague County's Highway 287 corridor. With 1,617 documented Find A Grave memorials, a 95% photography rate, an HTC presence in state cemetery records, and an active Cemetery Association, it is among the most thoroughly documented community cemeteries in the county.