From Georgetown, TX take FM-2338 West about 6 to7 miles to FM3405. Turn left until you junction with CR-289. Turn right and continue on CR-289 until you come to the yellow Fore Cemetery sign and gate with the number 1880. Pass through the gate and take the dirt road to Fore Cemetery.
Marker Text
Wiley Fore and his family came to this area from Alabama in 1883. The Baker community had been started two years earlier by Fore's nephew, Robert Baker, and his family. Soon after his arrival, Fore organized the Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the local chapter of the Grange. In 1884 he donated a one-acre plot of land for use as a free community cemetery, known as the Fore Graveyard. The first burials were of two children of the De Luna family in 1884. The Fore Cemetery Association was formed in the 1950s to maintain the graveyard. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Address 1844 CR 289
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FORE GRAVEYARD - Cemetery
Historical Narrative by Ralph Dixon Love
In early August 1883, Wiley Fore and wife Ellinor Melissa Caroline (Brewer) Fore came to the upper North San Gabriel River valley to visit their many kinsmen who had moved to this remote area of northwest Williamson County, Texas from the area of Ridgeway Prairie and McDade communities in northern Bastrop County, Texas where they had claimed preempted land for homesteading by 1851 on their arrival as new Texans from Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.
The Fores came to the recently settled community of Baker in the North San Gabriel valley by Elder Robert "Bob" Baker, early Primitive Baptist minister and school teacher, who settled there in 1881. Elder Baker and family formerly resided within the Antioch community in east Bastrop County. [1]
Elder Baker, a nephew of Wiley Fore, encouraged his uncle to purchase land nearby for ranching pursuits which the Fore's did, locating two adjacent parcels containing approximately 300 acres in the original purchases according to the Williamson County deeds dated October 15, 1883, and November 8, 1883. [2]
Wiley Fore organized the Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church immediately on his settling in this North San Gabriel community.
He also organized the local chapter of the Grange. He served as minister of the Ridgeway Prairie Cumberland Presbyterian Church prior to removing to Williamson County, and Wiley Fore served as Presiding Elder of Bethel Church until his death.
The Fore's designated a parcel of land consisting "of one acre and it's excess" of their recently purchased land to be identified as "FORE GRAVEYARD" since its inception in the Fall of 1884. They stipulated that "this shall serve as a place for the burial of the dead of the community 'without charge'. [3]
The de Luna children, a one-and-one-half-year-old boy, and his eight-month-old baby sister were the first burials in this old cemetery. Their deaths were attributed to "Flux Bowells" complicated by typhoid fever acquired from this migrant Mexican farm-working family's contaminated water supply: they drank from a shallow running stream near the place they resided. By 1897 a barbed wire fence had been constructed around the perimeters of Fore Graveyard. Mr. Robert Zebulan Baker recalled that he "was involved in the maintenance of 'Fore Graveyard' for 60 years of my life," before his death in February 1943. Mr. Baker purchased a metal entrance gate for the cemetery shortly before his death. [4]
Annual work days were observed for many years by the area families to maintain this old burial ground.
The menial work with tools, buckets, washtubs was used to remove every sprig of grass, rocks, and debris within the cemetery area. All families would bring basket lunches which were spread beneath the massive old live oak trees where everyone enjoyed "dinner on the ground" to include some rural social pleasure in addition to maintaining the old burial ground. [5]
The men of the community traditionally took the responsibility for digging and covering all graves at the cemetery for more than 80 years.6 By 1960 mechanized facilities were provided by area funeral homes to accommodate this service.
By the early 1950s, increased interest and concern for this old community burial ground was evident and a formally organized group was created to provide maintenance and financial support to perpetuate the cemetery.
Since its reorganization, the Fore Cemetery Association meets annually on the third Sunday, each September, for an all-day meeting session to transact any business matters concerning maintenance and care and to elect new officers of the association.
In recent years a modern substantial fence and entrance gates have replaced the older fencing at the cemetery and the cemetery is continuously maintained in good condition and is supported by persons near and far. This old burial ground is truly within the cradle that settled this remote rural area more than a century ago along the banks of the North San Gabriel River valley.
Most all the 137 graves within the cemetery can be identified today.
Area names include Wiley and Ellinor Fore and three of their infant grandsons, George Glen Fore, Edward Ellis Fore, and Monty Fore; and pioneer names as Simmons, Tucker, Williams, Daniells, Baker, Chance, Day, Lawson, Anderson, Vickers, Cole, McDonald, Ischy, Bernhardt, Hall, Isaac, Fisher, Box, Wade, Brewer, Woods, Bell, Pipkin, Sanders, Millegan, de Luna, and Baker.
Fore Graveyard continues to perpetuate these names today as fourth and fifth generations of most of these families are buried here. These same generations of descendants presently serve as officers of the cemetery association. It is evident of the importance that this community burial ground maintains today, as in recent times the current owners of the old Fore homestead, Mr. & Mrs. Albert Ragsdale, made an offer of additional land to the cemetery if it were needed. A century of continual necessity in the River country!