Hopewell Cemetery

Burials at this site on the 1846 Wilson Reed survey date from the 1860s. Hopewell Baptist Church, founded in 1866, erected a church building on adjoining property two years later. The earliest marked grave is that of an infant, John W. Pritchard, who died in 1870. Another gravestone bearing the date 1870 is that of William C. Fouty (1866-1870), is also interred here.

In 1875 Joshua Parmer Cox (1824-1881) purchased from J. H. Manning property which included the cemetery site. Cox, whose grave is located here, donated the land beside the church for use as a public burial ground. When the railroad extended south from Corsicana, the town of Navarro (1 mi. N) was laid out and Hopewell Baptist Church moved there in 1907. Navarro became a thriving community, dependent on cattle and farming until the oil boom of the 1920s.

The Hopewell Cemetery Association was organized in 1919. Before that time, families traditionally brought picnic lunches and gathered to tend the graveyard on annual workdays. In 1940 the cemetery was enlarged when two adjacent acres were purchased from Hugh and Irene Wilson. The 500 marked graves include those eof veterans of several wars.