To residents of B/CS and especially business owners on BOONVILLE:

There is no "e" in the middle of this word.

Boonville Community, Boonville Road, Boonville Cemetery.

The Chamber of Commerce map is wrong, as are many businesses on Boonville, like Chase Bank, Dominos, etc. who incorrectly list their address with the extra "e". I attribute it to being uneducated as to the history of the community and proper spelling of the word by newcomers to the area.

Handbook of Texas Online:

quote:

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BOONVILLE, TEXAS. Boonville, the first county seat of Brazos County, was on Farm Road 158, which is also known as Boonville Road, two miles northeast of the site of what is now Bryan. The Republic of Texas Congress appointed a committee–made up of J. H. Jones, Eli Seale, William T. Millican, Joseph Ferguson, and Mordecai Boon, Sr.–that selected for the county seat a tract of 150 acres from the John Austinqv league. The committee purchased the land, which was originally an unbroken post oak forest, from Elizabeth and William Pierpont for $150 and conveyed it in a deed to Brazos County on July 30, 1841. The town was built around a public square, with space in the square reserved for a courthouse. In 1841 Boonville was the county seat of Navasota County, but the county name was changed to Brazos in 1842. The town was probably named in honor of Mordecai Boon, Sr., whose uncle was Daniel Boone. In 1843 Boonville residents built a jail, and in 1846 they acquired a post office and built a courthouse. The Boonville courthouse, known as the "board shanty," served many purposes: there Gen. Sam Houston and other prominent statesmen made speeches, and circuit preachers such as William Tryon and Robert Alexander gave sermons. A stage line went from Houston through Boonville in 1850; its drivers and passengers would stop at the Boonville hotel overnight. The town enjoyed prosperity from 1842 to 1866. However, when the Houston and Texas Central Railway was extended from Millican to Bryan in 1866, Boonville residents elected, on October 15, 1866, to make Bryan the county seat. In December 1866 the Boonville mail was rerouted through the Bryan post office. In the 1990s all that remained of Boonville was the cemetery on Boonville Road. The townsite is marked by a Texas Centennial monument.

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http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/hvb81.html




[This message has been edited by Newbomb_Turk (edited 1/24/2010 1:19p).]

This leads me to a question that I've had for some time: Can people still be buried in the Boonville cemetery? Or, is it now closed for that?

Google maps has it listed correctly.

[The OP posted this thread in order to educate some of our posters about the history of this area. If you feel need to be insulting, please feel free to visit the General Board. -Staff]



[This message has been edited by TexAgs staff (edited 1/24/2010 12:57p).]

Only - I think it's closed. My folks have lived out there since the early 80's and I've never seen a funeral going on there.

You cannot bury any one in the Boonville cemetary because the records were lost and they do not know who is buried out there in unmarked graves. My friend wantd to bury her husband there but was unable to and given that as the reason.

It's not that they don't know WHO is out there...

many of the markers were stolen, and they don't know WHERE some of the graves are anymore...

Is it privately owned and do you have to prove a familial link to gain access to it? Every once in a while, I've seen a car at the entrance. I find older cemeteries, their histories and the markers within to be quite fascinating. (I'm not a ghoul)

From http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasGhostTowns/Boonville-Texas.htm
Texas Centennial granite monument sits on a grassy lawn behind a tall iron fence. Although the large gate for vehicles is locked, the pedestrian gate is to the right. A sliding-bolt latch on the cemetery side opens it. Parking is adequate for six cars

You can find very old markers in the Bryan City Cemetery and the cemetery next to Steephollow Baptist Church on FM 1179.

Good thread.

Also, to Chicken Oil Co.: You are not located at the corner of S. College and College Main. Your radio ad says you are.