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In order to better market and transport cattle from area ranches at the turn of the twentieth century, Henrietta King, owner of the King Ranch, and other ranchers joined to bring the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway through the area to Brownsville in 1904. Railway headquarters were established in the new town of Kingsville. Mrs. King and her son-in-law, Robert J. Kleberg, formed the Kingsville Town and Improvement Company to sell ranch land in and around the new townsite. In 1908, the Kingsville Cemetery Association purchased a forty-acre tract from the company, including a portion of property that was the location of many earlier burials. In April 1909, a cemetery was opened and named for Henrietta King's father, Hiram Chamberlain, a noted minister who organized the first Protestant church on the southern Rio Grande. Cemetery Association president Charles H. Flato sold lots from his business, the Kingsville Hardware Company. Clyde M. Allen, a Kingsville merchant, served as a non-paid manager of the cemetery for the next fifty years. Mrs. King was buried in the cemetery upon her death in 1925. Captain King and a son and daughter were moved later that year from their original burial places in San Antonio to the King family plot. Also buried in Chamberlain Cemetery are Uriah Lott, a visionary builder of railroads throughout central and south Texas, Robert Bartow Cousins, the first president of South Texas State Teachers College (later Texas A&I University) and H. H. Kendall, the engineer of the first St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway train to pull through Kingsville. Chamberlain Cemetery reflects the history of the community and continues to serve Kingsville and the surrounding area. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2008 |
