Little River-Wilson Valley Cemetery
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Marker Text: Wilson Valley community originally consisted of the seven Wilson brothers. Their wives and children, and the Huckabee and Thornton families they came from Mississippi 1867 to escape Civil War devastation.
According to family tradition, Easter Cobb Wilson, family matriarch, expressed a desire to be buried on a certain hillside. Her son Calvin Wilson designated a plot on that hill to be a family cemetery. In 1869, William J.R. Wilson, 3-year-old of Ben Edna Wilson, became the first to be interred at this site. Several others had been buried by 1877 when Easter Cobb Wilson died at age 81. In 1893, Bartlett and Avie McGregor Marks Huckabee deeded 3.27 acres of land, including the family plot, to the trustees of the Wilson Valley Cemetery Association. Wilson Valley, which had become a thriving area. Declined when the railroad went through Little River, and gradually the two communities merged. Graves in the cemetery reflect a high infant-child mortality rate in the late 19th-century and deaths due to an epidemic in 1917 and 1918. A 19th century tabernacle is used for meeting and ceremonies. In 1997, over 1,300 graves were counted in the cemetery. (1997) |
Marker No: 11727 & 17447
Erected 2000
Aluminum 27 x 42 Subject Marker & Texas Historic Cemetery Medallion
Geographic: 30.9747, -97.3708
Location: 1 mile south of Little River on Wilson Valley Loop, Little River
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