Aurora Cemetery
Wise County, Texas
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    Aurora Cemetery is located between Boyd and Rhome, south of Aurora.
    From Rhome go west on Hwy 114 about 2 miles. Turn left (south) on Cemetery Rd. The Cemetery is about a mile down the road on the left.
    The main gate is a walk-through gate, but there are also three drive-through gates on the road.

  

  

    Thank you to Addie Ruth Green Steele and Diane Russell for helping to take pictures at this cemetery. We found 1540 headstones in August of 2001.

    The text of the Historical Marker at the main gate reads as follows:

Aurora Cemetery

   The oldest known graves here, dating from as early as the 1860’s, are those of the Randall and Rowlett families. Finis Dudley Beauchamp (1825-1893), a confederate veteran from Mississippi, donated the 3-acre site to the newly-formed Aurora lodge No 479, A.F. & A.M., in 1877. For many years, this community burial ground was known as Masonic Cemetery. Beauchamp, his wife Caroline (1829-1915), and others in their family are buried here. An epidemic which struck the village in 1891 added hundreds of graves to the plot. Called "spotted fever" by the settlers, the disease is now thought to have been a form of meningitis.
   Located in Aurora Cemetery is the gravestone of the infant Nellie Burris (1891-1893) with its often-quoted epitaph; "As I was so soon done, I don’t know why I was begun." This site is also well-known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here.
   Struck by epidemic and crop failure and bypassed by the railroad, the original town of Aurora almost disappeared, but the cemetery remains in use with over 800 graves. Veterans of the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Korean and Vietnam conflicts are interred here.

    Picture of Finis Dudley Beauchamp sent in by his Great-Great Granddaughter, Barbara Byrom Short fivetonbridge@yahoo.com 

    There is another Historical Marker at the Bledsoe headstone. The text follows:

   

George Lawson Bledsoe

   Georgia native George Lawson Bledsoe (b. 1805), a carpenter and cotton gin builder, came to Texas in 1834. A veteran of the Texas Revolution and The Battle of San Jacinto, he received a pension for his military service and patented land grants in Brazoria, Cooke, Jack, Fannin, and Wise Counties. He was married to the former Ellen Bowdre (d. 1850) and had five children. Bledsoe is buried here along with his daughter Georgia and a brother-in-law, Preston E. Bowdre, Ellen Bledsoe and the couple’s other four children are buried in Fannin County, probably in Bledsoe Cemetery near Dial.

    According to the local legend the "space alien", that is mentioned on the Historical Marker at the gate, was buried under a round rock under the limb of this oak tree. (See picture below) The rock has been stolen.
    The story of the 1897 landing of this alien was made into a movie in 1985 called "Aurora Encounter" staring Jack Elam and Peter Brown.

  

There is a pavilion building in the center of the cemetery. It overlooks the newer section of the cemetery down the hill.

  

   An infamous gave in this cemetery is that of Ricky Lee Green. He was the serial killer of at least 2 men and 2 women. He was convicted of the Dec 26, 1986 murder of Steven Fefferman, and was executed on Oct 8, 1997.

 

Click Here to go to 'Layout Order' of headstones according to the map below.