Historic Grimes County family cemetery recent burial

Jimmie Dale Harris of Columbia, Texas with a familial connection to Grimes County, was recently buried in the historic Stephenson/Harris Cemetery located in the very south of the county off CR 325. This small family cemetery juts out into my hayfield.

Jimmie Dale was considered the Stephenson/Harris family genealogist. The cemetery’s history is closing in on two centuries. This cemetery is mostly about a historic Grimes County citizen’s descendant, Captain James Bell Stephenson, an early Texas Indian fighter and Confederate officer.

James Bell was born in Florida to James and Amelia Bell Stephenson in 1820. He was 6 years old when the Stephenson family quickly packed up following an Indian attack at their Florida home and joined a group headed to join Stephen F. Austin’s Texas colony.  

By March 1826, the Stephensons were at San Felipe with Austin’s second colony. James Bell’s father secured a land grant in Austin County on Dec. 2, 1832. This land was sold about 1840 shortly after the death of James Bell’s mother, Amerlia Bell, who died in 1839 in Austin County.  Stephenson then purchased a tract of 1,107 acres in the Benjamin Babbitt Survey near what later would become the boundary of Grimes and Waller Counties.

By the age of 18, James Bell was with the Captain John S. Bird command and fought in the “Bird Creek Indian Battle” on May 26, 1839 in which Bird lost his life. James Bell was a part of the Republic of Texas army and, undoubtedly, was at San Jacinto though records were lost or inaccurately recorded. Later he served under General Somerville and Captain Bogard repelling attacking Mexicans back beyond the Rio Grande River.

James Bell married Melissa Jane Maxwell on March 23, 1843. She was the daughter of Thomas Maxwell, who had married James Bell’s’ sister Civility Stephenson. In March 1862, James Bell volunteered for a Confederate Grimes County company, and was selected captain of the same group. He had just completed serving as a Grimes County Commissioner from 1858 through 1862. He was also a Retreat Masonic Lodge No. 133 member beginning in 1861, holding all offices during his tenure. In 1873, James Bell served with his brother-in-law William Maxwell under appointment of the Texas Governor Edmond Davis in the formation of Waller County out of Austin County.

At the close of the Civil War, the Stephenson’s were the parents of eight children when twins Olive and Oliver were born in May 1866 that claimed the life of James Bell’s wife, Melissa, as well as the twins. She was 39 years of age. These are the first burials recorded in the historic Stephenson/Harris Cemetery.  

It is reasonable to assess that James Bell’s father, James Stephenson, born in 1787 in North Carolina and died in 1853 in Grimes County at the age of 66. He was likely the first to be buried in this historic cemetery, though no marker exists. Subsequent family members who are buried in the historic Stephenson/Harris cemetery include: Captain James Bell Stephenson, born 1820; died Sept 1905, age  85; Washington Green Harris and wife Louisa (Stephenson) Harris; Alga Green “Pete” Harris, and wife Susie Lorsine (Danford) Harris; Winifred Lafayette (Mutt) Marshall and wife Ila Louise (Harris) Marshall; Hollis Farquhar Harris and wife, Billie Marie (Burroughs) Harris; William Harris Marshall; and Cynthia Dawn Harris, infant daughter of Jimmy Dale Harris.

Interesting side note to the recent burial of Jimmie Dale Harris is that he requested a burial to face the South. I’ve been told by a family member that during a late 1800s Yellow Fever epidemic unidentified travelers took ill near the Stephenson homestead with three dying and were allowed burial in the northeast corner of this cemetery.

Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership.