An old cemetery next to the St. Louis Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas will most likely be declared abandoned and taken over by the city.
Gravestones for Walter H. Branham and M.H. Terry, who died in 1953 and 1957, have been found – and who knows how many stones may be buried under the sod. The only identifying marker is an iron archway with the name “Branham Family Cemetery” across the top. It is said that dozens of tombstones were once scattered across the graveyard.
The city wants to declare the entire parcel of land at the corner of Highway 155 and Goss Street as abandoned, and with the help of the church next door, attempt to give those buried there a bit of dignity. If the council approves the resolution to take the property, Tyler will enter a memorandum of understanding with St. Louis Baptist Church for maintenance and repair of the cemetery. Church members are planning to construct a fence around the graveyard to protect it.
According to Sam Kidd, president of the East Texas Genealogical Society, about 240 cemeteries, many old family cemeteries, have been found in Smith County.
Read the article by Malena Ogles in the January 28, 2009 edition of Tylerpaper.com.
I am a descendant of the Branham clan of which there are many.It broke my heart to read that this sacred place was used as a dumping ground for many years.Please preserve this cemetery with the respect that it deserves. There are so many Branham descendants much like myself who regard this important part of our history as priceless.My maternal grandmother was Maude Branham Hicks and resided in Amherst County, Va. Sincerely, Norma J. Dofflemyer Front Royal, Va.
This site as well as others should be kept. There was a very old cemetery found outside of Murchison,Texas and it took months to find all the information however records of death are somewhere within grasp if one will take the time and effort to search. The one outside of Murchison was called Armstrong Cemetery and with help from Austin, and finding devices they found close to 12 people buried there. My uncle had been leasing the land for as long as I could remember and the man was sowing winter hay and kept hitting chunks of stone with letters on it, and from there the search was on.