Robert Wiseman immigrated to Texas in 1825 and received a land grant in 1831 on the banks of Old River in what is now Chambers County. Wiseman sold his land in 1853 to Dr. Edward G. Hartman. Dr. Hartman's wife, Mary Francis Hartman, died about 1853 after giving birth and was probably the first person buried in the family cemetery. Dr. Hartman later remarried and moved to Galveston, where he lived until his death in 1867, but the Hartman children remained at their home on Old River. The small, largely unmarked graveyard was used by the families who owned the land and is an example of rural Texas burial customs. Shallow depressions, along with two brick-covered crypts and two small modern tombstones, are the only physical evidence of the graveyard. Soft handmade bricks over the graves probably were manufactured at the 1870s Pierre Almeras Brickyard about three-fourths of a mile downstream on Old River. There are ten known burials in the Hartman Cemetery. Although there is no visible evidence, a separate slave cemetery is thought to exist on land adjacent to the family graveyard. (1991)