Friends Cemetery
Friendswood, TexasCoordinates: 29.527507, -95.198951
From I-45 take FM 2351 (Edgewood Drive) a few miles and turn left (south) onto Friendswood Drive. The church complex will be in the fourth block on the right - 502 South Friendswood Drive.
Except for old-time residents of Friendswood, I don't think even the locals realize that it was originally a Quaker community.
From the Friendswood Friends Church website:
"When Brown and Lewis came upon this area in northern Galveston County, they found 1,538 acres of prairie, well-drained by Clear Creek, Coward’s Creek, Mary’s Creek and Chigger Creek, and beautifully framed with the dense woods along the creeks. Feeling this surely was their Promised Land,” they negotiated with the owner, Galveston banker J.C. League, for a deed of trust, and on July 15, 1895, they recorded the name of the colony at the Court House in Galveston. They named it Friendswood."
This cemetery has a historical marker.
Friendswood Church Cemetery
"In 1895, six families left the disbanded Quaker settlement of Estacado in the Lubbock area and moved to Galveston County. Here, they established the community of Friendswood, named in honor of their faith and association with the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers.
"By November 1895, the settlers needed a burial ground when a falling tree killed young Newton Knode while he cut firewood with his father-in-law. His grave is the earliest marked burial at what became Friends Church Cemetery, adjacent to the Friends church and school building on property owned by community founders T.H. Lewis and F.J. Brown.
"A church appointed committee has cared for the cemetery throughout its history, arranging for maintenance and establishing criteria for burial. The cemetery was open to all community residents for several decades, but when the town's population boomed in the late 20th century, new restrictions then required church membership or early town residency to qualify for burial. The cemetery today is a link to the early community and its religious founding."
Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
There is a list of over 600, mostly photographed stones at FindaGrave.
