Before 1848, the land around Yegua Spring, later called Sam Smith Springs and now Lawhon Springs, was inhabited by Native American tribes. In 1848, John Lewis Smith and his son Samuel Alexander "Sam" Smith settled here and built log cabins for their families. John Lewis Smith, born in England, came to America with his family in 1806, grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in Wythe County, Virginia, married Hester Ann Warren in 1820, and after the birth of their first child moved with his family to Kentucky, Alabama, and then Bastrop County, Texas, in 1838. After settling this area in 1848, the families dug out the spring and renamed it Sam Smith Springs. David Burl Lawhon later bought the Smith land, added two acres to the original one-acre cemetery, and renamed it Lawhon Springs Cemetery. In 1884, he sold the cemetery land to trustees to manage it for the community. The first person buried here was an enslaved person of John Lewis Smith who had asked to be buried next to him; he was first buried in an unmarked grave above the spring on the sandy hillside and, after John's death in 1851, was moved to the northwest corner of the cemetery, where the grave is now marked with a carved rock. Those buried here include John Lewis Smith and Hester Ann Smith, both marked with bronze medallions reading "Citizen of the Republic of Texas," three of their six children, and many veterans and prominent citizens. From the early pioneer days in Texas, the cemetery has served the communities of Beaukiss, Siloam, and Lawhon Springs.