Allison Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Allison Cemetery, Grayson County. Three acres of ground that have been holding the people of this place since, best anyone can figure, the middle of the eighteen hundreds.

Now when I say best anyone can figure, I mean it. Some of the oldest graves out here aren't marked with carved stone at all. They're marked with rocks, roughly shaped, set into the earth by hands that didn't have anything fancier, or maybe just didn't need anything fancier.

Time has not been gentle to every marker here either. Some headstones have been moved. Others were destroyed.

So the full count of who rests in this ground, and how long they've been resting, is a question the cemetery keeps mostly to itself. The oldest dated marker belongs to a man who was fifty-three years old when he was buried in 1865. That's as far back as the record clearly speaks.

But the cemetery is believed to date from the mid-eighteen hundreds, and those rough rocks suggest it goes back further than any inscription can prove. Most of those interred here are descendants of H. Dennis, Sr., and other families from the surrounding area.

Among the notable graves are several war veterans, and then there is this: a family, a whole family, believed to have been buried in 1858 as influenza victims. That is a quiet kind of devastation, the kind that doesn't announce itself loudly, it just empties a household and fills a corner of the ground. The cemetery is still in use today, managed and maintained by the very descendants of the people buried within it.

Three acres. Rough rocks and carved stones. A family carried off by illness.

Veterans laid to rest. And descendants still tending all of it. Some places earn their ground.

What the marker says

Believed to date from the mid-1800s, Allison Cemetery occupies three acres of land. The oldest dated marker is that of a 53-year-old man who was buried in 1865, though some headstones have been moved or were destroyed over time, and older graves may be noted only by roughly shaped rocks. Most of those interred on this site are descendants of H. Dennis, Sr., and other area families. Notable graves include a family of influenza victims believed to have been buried in 1858 and several war veterans. Managed and maintained by descendants, the cemetery is still in use. (1997)