Burns Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker for Burns Cemetery up in Fannin County. Let's see what the land remembers. Now, 1876 is where we start.

A Tennessee-born man named William Boyd Burns, born in 1821, decided to do something that not everybody does. He gave land away. Not sold it, mind you.

Donated it. Right there next to his own log cabin home, he set aside a tract and said, this ground is for the community. That's how Burns Cemetery came to be.

But Burns didn't stop there. He also gave nearby property for a church building. They called it Burns Chapel, and that little building pulled double duty, serving not just as a house of worship but as an early schoolhouse for the surrounding rural area.

Out in the Trenton community, where Burns had settled as a pioneer, one building had to carry a lot of weight. The cemetery itself was first used in 1877. Two burials, right at the start.

Burns' stepson, John Patton. And his daughter, Priscilla Burns. Now here is where the story catches you quiet for a moment.

Priscilla was sixteen years old, and she had already been a teacher at the Orangeville Academy. Sixteen. A teacher.

Gone in 1877. The ground that her father gave to the community received her first. William Boyd Burns lived on until 1907.

Long enough to see what he had started grow into something that outlasted nearly everyone he knew. The cemetery gathered the Trenton community to itself over the decades. Pioneer settlers.

Prominent leaders of the town. And Civil War veterans, men who had carried that particular weight through their whole lives afterward. Among them was Dr.

W. C. Holmes, an early physician who had fought at Shiloh.

And John W. Connelly, who had been a teacher in the Indian Territory before becoming what the marker calls a popular local preacher. A man who taught, then preached.

The kind of man a small community could build around. The original tract Burns donated has since been enlarged, through both a donation of land and the purchase of additional property. The cemetery is still in use today.

Every year, a memorial service is held there to honor the settlers who led in the area's development. A man from Tennessee gave some land next to his log cabin, and for well over a century, that ground has been keeping the story of the Trenton area whole. That's the kind of math that doesn't need numbers to add up.

What the marker says

Land for this cemetery was donated in 1876 by Tennessee native William Boyd Burns (1821-1907), whose log cabin home was located adjacent to the site. Pioneer settler of the Trenton community, he also gave nearby property for a Union church building, Burns Chapel, which served as an early schoolhouse for the surrounding rural area. The cemetery was first used in 1877 for the burials of Burns' stepson John Patton and daughter Priscilla Burns, who at 16 was a teacher in the Orangeville Academy. Other graves include those of pioneer area settlers and prominent leaders of Trenton. Among the Civil War veterans interred here and early physician Dr. W. C. Holmes, who fought at Shiloh, and John w. Connelly, a former teacher in the Indian Territory who became a popular local preacher. For well over a century the Burns Cemetery has served residents of the Trenton area. The original tract has been enlarged through a donation of land and the purchase of additional property. Still in use, the cemetery serves as a historic reminder of the region's rich heritage and as the site of an annual memorial service honoring the settlers who led in the area's development.