Briar Creek Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker at Briar Creek Cemetery is the source of this story, and I'm just the one bringin' it to you across the miles. Out in Montague County, there's a piece of ground that holds something most places can't claim: the memory of the people who showed up first, before the roads were roads, before the towns had names worth arguing over. Settlers had been drifting into this part of Texas for a while, but it was after the Civil War that they really started coming in numbers.

Two things cleared the way: the opening of rail lines, and the end of the Indian conflicts that had made this stretch of country a dangerous proposition. Once those doors swung open, people came. And some of them stayed.

Permanently. The first burials at Briar Creek Cemetery came in the late 1870s. Two of them.

One was G.W. Simmons, a man who'd made the long journey from Kentucky to plant himself in Texas soil, only to end up in it sooner than most plans allow. The other was an infant, a child of W.B. and Sarah Jane Dooley, Sarah Jane born a Herndon before she came to this country.

Now, land for a cemetery doesn't just appear. Somebody has to give it over. In this case, it was Simmons' sister Margaret and her husband, G.W.

Burnett, who later deeded the ground for that purpose. A quiet act, that. The kind of thing that doesn't make headlines but makes community.

By the 1880s, the early Briar Creek School had settled onto adjacent land. Children learning their letters within earshot of where the first settlers rested. But time has a way of taking things back.

The school is gone now. Only the cemetery remains, standing as a reminder of the area's earliest pioneers. The marker itself was placed in 1986, Texas Sesquicentennial year, 1836 to 1986.

A hundred and fifty years of Texas, and Briar Creek was there at the beginning of this corner of it. Some places get statues. Some get their names on courthouses.

Briar Creek got a cemetery and a quiet patch of Montague County ground that refuses to forget.

What the marker says

Settlers began arriving in this area in increased numbers after the Civil War with the opening of rail lines and the cessation of indian conflicts. Many of the pioneers are interred here. The first burials, in the late 1870s, were for Kentucky native G.W. Simmons and for an infant of W.B. and Sarah Jane (Herndon) Dooley. Land for the cemetery was later deeded by Simmons' sister Margaret and her husband, G.W. Burnett. The early Briar Creek School was located on adjacent land by the 1880s, but only the cemetery remains as a reminder of the area's earliest settlers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.