Fort Lancaster Cemetery

This small cemetery is one of two known at Fort Lancaster. The fort likely had an official post military cemetery, but its location is not known, and the burials there would have been relocated to another fort when Fort Lancaster was decommissioned. This cemetery contains the graves of Private J.H. Norris of the Confederate Army, the young son of Captain Arthur T. Lee, another grave with a headstone simply inscribed "Little Margaret," and several other unknown graves. Private J.H. Norris served in Company F, 2nd Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, commanded by Lt. Col. Baylor, and died of pneumonia at Fort Lancaster in 1861. Nothing is known about Little Margaret except what her gravestone says, that she died 13 October 1858. Arthur Lee, the young son of Captain Arthur T. Lee, died while Lee and his family were traveling to Fort Davis. Edward Fitzgerald Beale wrote on July 9, 1857, that Captain Lee, the officer in second command at Fort Davis who had traveled with them from Fort Clark, had the misfortune to lose his little son, fifteen months old, shortly after reaching the post. Captain Lee later became an accomplished artist, poet, and author.

Texas · United States