Anderson Family Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Anderson Family Cemetery in Dallas County. Now, every family that put down roots in this part of Texas left something behind, and the Anderson family left this: a cemetery that opens its story with two Kentuckians who had already done a lifetime of traveling before they ever set foot in Dallas County. William Anderson, born around 1785, and his wife Celia, Celia Lair before she married, born around 1791.

Both of them Kentucky-born, both of them the kind of people who didn't stay put when the frontier called. They'd already picked up and moved to Missouri before the next move came. And what brought them to Dallas County?

A son. John Lair Anderson, born 1819, had come ahead of them. He was a Peters Colony settler, arrived 1846, and he made his home here in Dallas County.

So William and Celia followed. That's the pull of family, right there. You track your people across half a continent and you end up in Texas.

There are worse outcomes. William died in 1858. Celia followed him the very next year, 1859.

And both of them were laid to rest in this ground, the same ground that would hold their son John when his time came in 1885. Three generations of a family's journey, and it ends here, together. Now the William Anderson home itself, it stood about ninety yards to the southwest of where you're standing.

Not far at all. Close enough that you'd imagine Celia could look out and see the cemetery from the house, or maybe she never looked that way on purpose. The marker was erected by the family of T.S.

Anderson, I. folks who understood that a cemetery is more than a resting place. It's the period at the end of a very long sentence that began in Kentucky, wound through Missouri, and came to rest right here in Dallas County, Texas.

What the marker says

Opened with burials of William (1785?-1858) and Celia (Lair) Anderson (1791?-1859), Kentuckians who lived on Missouri frontier before following to Dallas County a son, John Lair Anderson (1819-85), a Peters colony settler of 1846, also buried here. The William Anerson home stood about 90 yards to the southwest of this cemetery. Incise on back: Marker erected by family of T.S. Anderson, I.