Plummers Cemetery

Located at 1150 Springdale Road, Plummers Cemetery, an 8 acre property, was originally a privately-owned cemetery likely established before 1898, the date of the oldest gravestone still standing there. The City of Austin acquired Plummers in 1957 as a condition of the purchase of land for Givens Park. Plummers Cemetery was named for Thomas P. Plummer (1860–1926), an African American Texas native who owned a farm in Travis County in 1900 and later both owned the cemetery and worked as the sexton. The African American cemetery was once known as Mount Calvary, not to be confused with another Austin cemetery with the same name.

Plummers Cemetery was likely established prior to 1898, the death year of Jack Jones, possibly the first person interred in the cemetery with a marker.128 The cemetery may have been known as Mount Calvary Cemetery, not to be confused with another Mount Calvary Cemetery (located elsewhere in the city). The cemetery was named for Thomas P. Plummer (1860–1926), an African American Texas native who owned a farm in Travis County and later worked as the cemetery sexton. Thomas’ wife Mattie, who died in 1909, is buried at Plummers Cemetery near the top of the hill. Thomas Plummer briefly established the Capital City Burial Association, a fraternal beneficiary association, in June 1908, but whether that organization was ever a going concern is unknown. He failed to file its annual report in 1909, and the association subsequently may have been dissolved.