Friendship Cemetery

This is a Black Cemetery

From the Highway 39 over pass at highway 79 in Jewett go south on Highway 39 a distance of 2 ½ miles to CR 3221.  Turn left on CR 3221 and go ½ mile to CR 321.  Turn right on CR 321 and go south 2.3 miles to the Cemetery.  It will be on the right (west) side of the road.

Another way to get there is:

From the intersection of Highway 7 and CR 321, which is 4.2 miles east of Robbins, go north on CR 321 5.7 miles to the cemetery.

*There is a story of the history of this cemetery at the bottom of the list.

Surveyed by Nadine Johnson 2000
Updated as needed through the use of the Obits

Friendship Cemetery Leon County 1919-2000
Black Cemetery

Was established around 1919 in the Friendship Community for the following communities: North Salam, South Salam, Robbins, Concord, Hopewell, Mt. Lilly, Jewett and Fellowship.

     I learned through some of my ancestors that their son, Marion Haynes, had small pox and died, and they had no where there in Friendship to bury him.  So Mr. Earnist Evans deeded one acre of land to the Friendship Community.  That was where the ancestors of the Haynes family settled.  They were Isaac & Adelaide Haynes.  They were slaves of Thomas Lyal Brumbly.  Emigrated from Manchester England to Georgetown, South Carolina.  From there to Alabama in 1852, to Mississippi 1854 and to Texas 1881.  At this time Isaac, now a farmer.  When he left south Carolina with $300.00 and settled in the Friendship Community of Jewett, Texas.  You see from the grave and Head stones one Lessie Haynes was born in 1900 and died in 1916.  That was because her father Rev. Jeff Haynes removed her from the Seal Cemetery and took her remains to the Friendship Cemetery, where the family had already established two churches, which was Friendship Baptist Church and the Church of God & Christ, and establish the Friendship Cemetery.  I have learned that their ancestors, Isaac and Adelaide Haynes is buried in Seals or Curtis Cemetery for they were the two other cemeteries which was Black.  There are no head stones or grave markers we have no other way of knowing if they are in Seals or Curtis Cemetery except the talk of some of the older ancestors children.  I am the fifth generation and I learned it from Leon County Marriage Records and Head stone and Census records.  When most of the children of 1900 generations moved away for lack of jobs and so many never returned to Leon County.  They seemed to forget their ancestors.  So many of these ancestors had no head stone, no grave markers, no death records at the county seat.  I hop the death record that I am going to file with Leon County on the behalf of the Friendship Cemetery of the Black community will be kept up dated through the millennium.  To all the 1900 and millennium generations and all to come.  They will be able to trace their Ancestors to their interment resting place.  I Nadine Johnson found who for obituary that my mother had over the years.  I am going to try and get Curtis, which located in Hopewell Community, which is black, and Moore located about 3 ½ miles coming south out of Jewett on your right.  I just wont to say it was one of my dreams to do this for our ancestors and hope for the millennium to come.

Nadine Johnson

Thanks on behalf of the friendship Black community.

    I Nadine Johnson, fourth oldest of eight children of Odell & Alice Benson Johnson, with the blessing of the six living siblings would like to dedicate this up date of history of Friendship cemetery to the whole history of Parents, grandparents, great grand parents and ancestors.

The Travelers

They has put on invisibility
Dear Lord we cannot see
But this we know, - Although the road ascends
And passes from our sight,
That there will be no Night
That you will take them gently by the hand
And lead them on Along the road of life that never ends,
And they will find it is not death but dawn
We do not doubt that you are there as here
And you will hold them dear,
That life did not begin with birth.