The Huntsville (Texas) Pictorial, Wednesday, August 19, 1964, page 5:

KIN FINDS 114-YEAR OLD GRAVE OF ANCESTRY AT DODGE-UNCOVERS HISTORICAL MYSTERY

For the past 114 years, a lonely grave has rested, undisturbed, on a clearing in the timberlands near Dodge. The tall moss-covered pines have watched as sentinals over the stone slab where lies "Eliza Hemphill, wife of J. B. Hemphill. Died 22 August, 1850. Age 26 years, 4 months and 10 days."

Mr. E. R. Wright, Huntsville attorney who has owned this land since 1941, has also guarded this grave and seen to its upkeep. He and his wife, Maude, have felt a natural curiosity about this pioneer woman who had died in the spring of her years. They have surmised from a pile of rubble that a house once stood nearby, and that a well had been dug near a natural spring to provide this early family with water. A huge pecan tree several yards away was surely planted by some member of the family, for it's growth indicates an age of 75 to 100 years, perhaps more. The Wrights have heard that there were once several small graves, perhaps of children, near that of Eliza but time has obliterated their presence. And so they have wondered over the years who the family might have been and if they left any descendants. Certainly as far as they know, none have ever inquired, though several years ago, without Mr. Wright's knowledge, someone had repaired some rocks that had crumbled beneath the slab.

Dan Hemphill faintly remembers his grandfather Jacob, telling him about someone who loved his dead wife so well that he had a stone hauled all the way from Houston to the site of her grave by wagon. (Editors Note: The slab is engraved with the name, "T.L. Brynes, Houston." who is thought to be the manufacturer of Memorials).

The slab, with the identifying inscription, rested on rocks which apparently had first been cemented with mud. Wright said that about 8 years ago, someone unknown to him had repaired the grave, mortared the multicolored rocks into a mass, and replaced the slab. Bits of blue and pink china as well as heavy pottery were scattered in a pasture nearby and around the grave and homesite on the creek.

Sevier Co marriages

HEMPHILL, James - Eliza SORRELL, July 30, 1840, by L.B. Moore, JP, B1-9

1850 HEMPHILL JAMES Walker County TX 278 No Township Listed

page 56 on ancestry.

406 Hemphill Jak 27 m farmer 1800 ARK

Eliza 24 f TN

William 8 m AR

Jacob 6 m AR

Jane 3 f AR