Cemetery: A Funeral was a major affair -- Fort Lancaster SHS, near Sheffield TX - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

There are just a few graves left at the Fort Lancaster Cemetery on board Fort Lancaster state historic site near Sheffield Texas. Most of the graves belonged to soldiers, and removed to Fort Sam Houston in the 18 seventies when Fort Lancaster was abandoned.

The graves that are still here in the Fort Lancaster Cemetery today belonged to civilians living at or employed at the Fort, for whom no government funds or direction to relocate to sent Fort Sam Houston was given.

An interpretive sign at the cemetery reads as follows:

"CEMETERY
A funeral was a major affair

This small cemetery is the only one known at Fort Lancaster. The fort likely had an official post military cemetery, but it's location is not known in the burials there would have been relocated to another Fort on Fort Lancaster was decommissioned.

The cemetery only contains 5 graves, all of non-United States military personnel. Burials include private J. H. Noris of the Confederate Army, the young son of Captain Arthur T. Lee, another gray with the headstone simply inscribed "little Margaret" into unknown graves.

Private J. H. Noris – a private in the Confederate Army, first company F, second Regiment, Texas mounted rifles, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Baylor. Private Noris died of an unidentified disease in 1861.

Little Margaret
"little Margaret"– nothing is known about this grave except with the gravestone tells us, "little Margaret died 13 October 1858."

Arthur Lee – young son of Captain Arthur T. Lee, (pictured), he died while Lee and his family were traveling to Fort Davis. Captain Lee went on to be an accomplished artist, poet, and author.

"This afternoon a very melancholy fact was communicated to us. Captain Lee, the officer in second commanded Fort Davis who had traveled with us from Fort Clark where we met him, had the misfortune to lose his little son 15 months old. The captain had hardly reached the post before this mournful event occurred. – Edward Fitzgerald Beale, July 9, 1857"

Group that erected the marker: Texas historical commission URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link] Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: Fort Lancaster state historic site Sheffield, TX

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Date Logged Log   12/20/2016 Benchmark Blasterz visited it