Oak Grove Cemetery is one of the state’s most famous cemeteries; its trees shade the graves of many legendary Texans from the Revolutionary period. Four signatories to the Texas Declaration of Independence lie here, including Thomas Jefferson Rusk, Sam Houston’s secretary of war during the Texas Republic and one of the first two U.S. senators for Texas after statehood.
Other notables include Hayden Edwards, empresario and leader of the failed Fredonian Rebellion; Adolphus Sterne, legislator and financier; as well as veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto. Their internment here speaks to the importance of Nacogdoches during that tumultuous time. The town was a hotbed of unrest that supplied the revolutionary cause with men and money; and witnessed one of the earliest outbreaks of violence: the Battle of Nacogdoches.