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Benevolent Black Cemetery, Lamar County, Texas

LOCATION:	Benevolent Black Cemetery is located within the city limits of Paris behind the sale barn in Block 152 in the city of Paris of the Lamar County Road Map produced by American Drafting and Services revised December 1993. It appears to be abandoned at this time. Many of the records for the cemetery have come from the Rodgers and Wade Funeral Records and death certificates.
DIRECTIONS:	The cemetery is north of the intersection of 14th St NE and Center St. It is overgrown and impenetrable at this time.
GPS COORDINATES:	(33.6761935 Latitude and -95.541433095932 Longitude)
OLDEST KNOWN BURIAL:	The oldest inscribed grave is that of either Addie P. Jackson or Samuel White, both of whom died in 1881, but the exact date isn't known.
NUMBER OF GRAVES:	There are 171 known graves in the cemetery. (July 2017)
SIGNS/MARKERS:	There is not a sign for the cemetery.
LAST ENUMERATION:	No enumeration has been completed.
ADD'L INFORMATION:	From Skipper Steely, ed., Backward Glances Volume 2 1930-1932 (Paris, TX: Wright, 1985), p. 64: "The land for a Negro burial ground now east of the fair grounds, was sold by Captain A. D. Brooks, his wife and her brother John F. Craddock, in 1872, to the Freedmen's Benefit association. It was described as part of the Reddin Russell headright survey, apportioned to Mrs. Brooks from the estate of her father, John R. Craddock, and was 28 by 11 1/8 poles, containing two acres, for which the Freedmen paid $50. I am not able to say just what the Freedmen's Benefit association was, but am sure it was an organization of Negroes who had been freed by the war and who had organized to acquire the burial ground and for other mutual benefit purposes."
PICTURE(S):	Photograph of the Cemetery Is Not Available Yet

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