Brushy Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Brushy Cemetery, out in Montague County. Settlement of this area began in the 1870s. Now, that's not ancient history as far as Texas goes, but out on that land, people were starting something from scratch.

Families, futures, a whole community taking root. And by 1880, they had the three things that said a settlement meant business: a school, a church, and a cemetery. You build those three, you're not just passing through.

You're staying. The land for the cemetery and that nearby church was deeded by W.W. and Mary A. Wilcox, and whatever else the years carried away, those two pieces of ground remained.

The community they anchored was called Brushy, and by all accounts it once thrived. The earliest documented grave in that cemetery belongs to W.C. Hatfield, born in 1846, died in 1877.

That's the oldest name the records can confirm, the first marker standing watch over all the others that followed. And follow they did. Veterans of the Civil War are buried there, in marked graves and unmarked ones alike.

Children. Pioneer settlers who came out when this part of Texas was still figuring out what it wanted to be. Some of those graves have stones.

Some have nothing but the ground itself to remember them by. Now, a community can fade. Brushy, it seems, faded some.

But it did not disappear entirely. Descendants of those early citizens still live in the area today. And in 1973, a cemetery association formed to make sure the graveyard is maintained.

The school is gone. The thriving community, mostly memory. But the land W.W. and Mary A.

Wilcox deeded still holds its dead, and the living still come to tend it. That's not nothing. Out in Montague County, that's just about everything.

What the marker says

Settlement of this area began in the 1870s. By 1880 a school, church, and cemetery were established. Located on land deeded by W.W. and Mary A. Wilcox, this cemetery and the nearby church serve as reminders of the once thriving community of Brushy. The earliest documented grave in the cemetery is that of W.C. Hatfield (1846-1877). Also interred here, in marked and unmarked graves, are veterans of the Civil War, children, and pioneer settlers. Descendants of early citizens still reside in the area, and a cemetery association formed in 1973 maintains the graveyard. (1990)