Established in the mid-1800s, Covington Cemetery honors the memory of early Texas pioneers of Hill County and their descendants. In the early 1850s, James Jackson Gathings (1817-1880) moved from Mississippi to Texas, bringing his family, slaves, and enough livestock and essentials to create a new life on the Blackland Prairie of north central Texas. In May 1853, he purchased 3,136 acres on Aquilla Creek, the first recorded land purchase he made in Hill County. In 1854, his younger brother, Philip Gathings (1819-1895), purchased 1,471 adjacent acres, and together they developed two large plantations for agriculture and raising stock. James set aside one hundred acres to be laid out in lots of one to five acres for the town of Covington and installed a steam mill, saw mill, tannery, wood shop, cloth loom, and brick yards. The brothers donated 10 acres for a church and the Gathings Male and Female College, the first in Hill County. The earliest marked grave in the cemetery is that of James Gathings' son-in-law, Joseph Patterson Wier (1831-1864), who was killed during the Civil War at the Battle of Yellow Bayou in Louisiana, initially buried near the battlefield, and later brought home by James and reinterred on the cemetery's highest elevation. The cemetery includes 7.5 acres and almost 2,500 marked graves maintained by the Covington Cemetery fund. In 1970, Allie Plumlee, Lucille Cowley Williams, and Wileta Gathings McCall organized townspeople to clean and restore the cemetery. A distinguishing feature is the native rock wall surrounding the property.