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RUTLAND-CHAPPELL CEMETERY
DOUGLASSVILLE, CASS CO., TEXAS
LOCATION: From Red Blinking light in Douglassville, take Hwy 8 south, turn left from Hwy 8 on CR 2235. Follow CR 2235 for 1 mile to the cemetery.
The Rutland-Chappell Cemetery was begun by members of these 2 families, shortly joined by friends and neighbors; the Wilson clan, the Snipes settlers, the Heaths and Bakers, in the early 1800's. The cemetery has only seldom been used in the past 50 years, after the Douglassville Cemetery was begun.
James Harvey Snipes, a plantation overseer from the north, moved with his 4 children to Cotton Valley, Alabama where he met and married Mary Jane Wilson, daughter of Thomas Joseph Wilson and Nancy McEachern, whose parents had emigrated from Scotland in the late 1700's-early 1800's. The 2 families - Wilson and Snipes came together to the Douglassville area before the Civil War. The Wison family was said to be quite prosperous, the father giving each of his 7 daughters 320 acres of land and enough money to build a house on it.
Mr. Snipes established a general merchandise store which later became known as the Snipes Brothers where they sold everything from ladies hats to caskets. His store included a Post Office and the only telephone exchange in the area.
When the 2 families migrated over to Cass County, they moved westward and down the Mississippi River on flatboats to New Orleans, bringing their children, house-hold goods, slaves and thoroughbred horses. Continuing westward, they came up Red River to the port of Jefferson and then by wagons north the 30 miles to Douglasville.
Mr. Snipes was one of the original pioneers who established and had built the First Methodist Church in Douglassville in 1856.
Many prominent people visited in his home, the "Old Snipes Place", which was located on the old highway 77 until it burned around 1922. Most descendants of the families were buried in Douglassville Cemetery in later years.
Cemetery is known to be predominantly white.
Read 5-MAY-1994 by Jean Gilley, Jane Nunn & Melba Tims.
The oldest known marked grave: Row B4
BAKER Ann Eliza D. 10-JAN-1831 07-FEB-1854
Much more information and a list of internments can be found in
THE CEMETERIES WITH CASS COUNTY CONNECTIONS VOLUME 5
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