“Weeping Mary is a small, nearly all-Black community, just off Highway 21 in Cherokee County behind the Caddoan Indian Mounds Historic Site. Heading north on Texas 21 toward Alto, after a few miles take a left by the junkyard (a good place to browse for offbeat items and antiques) and the Thomas Chapel Church. The population is a mere 29 people scattered about four or five county roads off of CR-2907, aka Weeping Mary Road.

It is said that the community, which was never incorporated, was formed after the Civil War by freed slaves and named after the weeping of Mary Magdelene at the tomb of Jesus. However, local lore has it that it was named after a matriarch who formed a pact with the area’s freed slaves not to sell their lands to white settlers. But when one man sold his plot of land to whites, the matriarch is said to have spent her life weeping for the loss of her community. Another legend has it that gold is buried throughout the community, but according to Weeping Mary resident J.L. Skinner, it is simply that: a legend. A local school opened in 1896, but closed sometime after WWII. The church that was built in Weeping Mary was moved to its current location, which unfortunately is prone to flooding. Resident J.L. Skinner says that the congregation sometimes boats to the front entrance of the church when nearby Bowles Creek floods. The community has many multi-generational families, including the Skinner, Green, and Peyton families, to name a few. The town has had its fair share of publicity with Photographer Rufus Lovett’s There’s Something About Weeping Mary feature in Texas Monthly in 1998, a children’s murder mystery novel written by Merry Hasell Frels, entitled Simmering Secrets of Weeping Mary, and my own play and independent film entitled The Judgment of Weeping Mary which will be submitted at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in the summer of 2009.

The community does not have a store, museum, or even its own cemetery. Weeping Mary’s dead are buried in the Thomas Chapel Cemetery off Highway 21 North. The community has a playground with a single swing set (which appears to have been removed between July 2004 and October 2005), a single park bench and a trash can. A second church is under construction right next to the old one. Even with their small population the community still supports a gospel choir.”

Written by Andrew Hardaway, Director/Writer/Actor, NYC (formerly of San Antonio).

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2014/04/02/298329027/scenes-and-sorrows-a-portrait-of-weeping-mary
Texas is full of memorable town names — Blanket, Stagecoach, Domino and Paint Rock, to list just a few. Each has at least one tale behind it, and All Things Considered host Melissa Block has been telling some of them as part of the series Deep In the Heart Of (A Transforming) Texas.

One of them is Weeping Mary, an unincorporated town in rural east Texas. It was established as a “freedom colony” with land given to former slaves after the Civil War.

Photographer O. Rufus Lovett started photographing the residents of Weeping Mary in 1994. There are a few stories as to how the town got its name, but one tends to stick.

“There was a lady named Mary who lived there and folklore has it, anyway, that a white man wanted to purchase her land. And she did not want to sell it to a white man,” Lovett says.

The man in question pers\uaded a black man to purchase the land for him instead.

“So Mary was tricked out of selling her land to another African-American,” he says. “She became very distraught over this and wept and wept.”

She became known as “Weeping Mary,” and the community later adopted the name.

When Lovett first started taking photos in the town, getting anyone to share the origin story was tough.

“[I] had to do a little coaxing after visiting Weeping Mary over a period of time to even get the story from elders in the community,” he says. “So this is front-porch lore in Weeping Mary.”

And for now, that lore seems to stay with older folks in the town.