Goliad Community Cemetery
(This is a Black Cemetery)
From OSR take Highway 75 north a distance of 0.65 miles. This is just about to the Leon County sign on the highway. There is a dirt road to the right. The Williams Family Cemetery is on this corner. Take this dirt road, at about 300 feet a gate (usually locked), at 0.25 miles a cattle guard, a total of 0.65 miles to the entrance of Grace Chapel. The cemetery is to the right across the church property in the woods.
BOWMAN, Frank Pvt US Army WWI |
July 1, 1855 | Jan 13, 1958 |
BOWMAN, John Pvt Co. B. 410 Res Labor Bn QMC WWI |
Feb 26, 1895 | Aug 29, 1949 |
BURNETT, Francis | unmarked | |
HARRIS, Ada | unmarked | |
HARRIS, Della | unmarked | |
HENDERSON, Mattie | unmarked | |
JONES, Johnnie | Feb 18, 1876 | Oct 27, 1944 |
KING, Jim | unmarked | |
KIZZEE, Perry | 1857 | Aug 2, 1927 |
MANNING, Joe | Feb __, 1866 | Mar __, 1924 |
SIMPSON, Algie | unmarked | |
SIMPSON, George | no dates | |
SIMPSON, Sam | unmarked | |
VAULTS, Sindy | unmarked | |
_____________ | Sept 26, 1910 | ____ 21, 1988 |
(top of monument is missing) |
Sallie (Simpson) Roberson, who was born in this community in 1923, relates that the Gibbs out of Huntsville gave some 2 or 3 acres for the cemetery. She also says that there are 3 or 4 hundred people buried here. In her younger years this was a good size community with a Baptist Church, a Methodist Church, a schoolhouse and the cemetery located side by side. The school is gone. The Baptist Church is gone. The cemetery is all but gone. She says that back in the 1950’s some white boys came over and vandalized the cemetery by busting the gravestones apart with sledgehammers. Some of the stones show signs of this vandalization.
The Methodist Church is “Grace AME Church”. Sallie said that it was founded in the 1880’s. There is a plaque on the wall of the building that says “GRACE CHAPEL, AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1905 – 1989 erected 1968”. The Church and grounds are very well kept. They hold only one service a year, a homecoming service, to keep the Church alive.