Biggerstaff Cemetery

Duane's take

The marker's the word on this one, and here's how I tell it. About a third of a mile south of where you're rollin' right now, there's a piece of ground that's been holding memory since before the Civil War. Let me set the scene.

Two families, bound by blood and by choice, came out of Missouri and planted roots in Fannin County in 1854. Oliver Jackson, born in 1812, and his wife Mary Livingston Jackson, born in 1818, settled on one farm. Right next door, on adjoining land, came George Biggerstaff, born in 1823, and his wife Didama.

Now Didama was a Jackson before she married, born in 1835, so these weren't just neighbors. They were kin putting down stakes together in the same Texas soil. The Jacksons did what settling families do when they mean to stay.

They erected a schoolhouse right there on their property. Education wasn't waiting on anyone. But it's the Biggerstaff farm, the land next door, where the cemetery took shape.

The first recorded burial was Grant Clutter, in 1864. Think about what 1864 meant in this country. That date sits in the middle of the war, and a name going into the ground that year carries weight whether the marker tells us more or not.

The years kept turning. Oliver Jackson died in 1872. Mary Jackson in 1890.

Didama Biggerstaff in 1902. George Biggerstaff, who had come out of Missouri as a young man, didn't leave this world until 1906. About fifty burials in all, the marker says, generation after generation of Jacksons and Biggerstaffs and their descendants, all finding their way back to that Fannin County farm.

The last recorded burial was Russell McCormack in 1935. From Grant Clutter in 1864 to Russell McCormack in 1935, that ground kept its quiet, faithful work. This marker was placed as part of the Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood, marking one hundred and fifty years since 1845.

Seems right, somehow, that a cemetery reminding us who came and who stayed would be honored in a year set aside to remember where Texas itself began.

What the marker says

(One-third mile south) The families of Oliver (1812-1872) and Mary (Livingston) Jackson (1818-1890) and George (1823-1906) and Didama (Jackson) Biggerstaff (1835-1902) moved here from Missouri and settled on adjoining farms in 1854. The Jacksons erected a schoolhouse on their property and this cemetery was established on the Biggerstaff farm. The first recorded burial here was that of Grant Clutter in 1864. The cemetery, which contains about 50 burials, served as the graveyard for the Jackson and Biggerstaff families and their descendants. The last recorded burial was that of Russell McCormack in 1935. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995