Historical Marker

Parker Cemetery

Historical marker location:
Grapeland, Texas
( 2.9 miles northwest of Grapeland on FM 1272 to Parker Cemetery Road (CR2305), .5 mile to cemetery)
Marker installed: 1989

Willis Parker arrived in this area from North Carolina in the 1850s. Many of his relatives later joined him in Texas. Upon Willis Parker's death about 1857, his parents Ralph R. and Sarah C. Hodge Parker set aside land on their farm for a cemetery. Although Willis Parker's grave is believed to be the oldest here, his father's grave bears the earliest tombstone (1861). Of the more than four hundred marked and unmarked graves, most are interments of the Parker and related families, including Civil War, World War I and World War II veterans.