Campground Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere out in Rusk County, there's a patch of ground called Campground Cemetery, and the name alone ought to make you slow down and wonder. Let me set the scene.

Back in 1857, this very property became the organizing ground for the Mt. Zion Baptist Association, thirteen area Baptist churches coming together in one place. Thirteen churches.

That's a gathering with some weight to it, and the land they chose to meet on would go on carrying weight for a long time after. Now fast forward to 1864 and into 1865. The Civil War is grinding along, and Confederate General John A.

Wharton's Cavalry troop needed a place to camp. They found it right here, at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, using the sanctuary and the grounds as their campsite.

Soldiers bedding down where the faithful had gathered. That's the kind of thing a piece of land remembers. And the land did remember, because somewhere in the naming of this cemetery, that cavalry camp left its mark.

The place came to be called Campground Cemetery. Now here's where it gets quietly mysterious. The first burial the records will tell you about is Guss Christopher, in 1910.

But you look out across that ground and you see unmarked grave sites, a number of them, and they suggest the earth had already received people before anyone thought to write it down. Who they were, and exactly when, the marker doesn't say. Some stories the ground keeps to itself.

What the marker does say is that about 140 burial sites are there, and that the cemetery continues to serve the surrounding rural community to this day. A place that hosted faith in 1857, sheltered soldiers in the 1860s, and has been receiving the departed ever since. That's not just a cemetery.

That's a long memory.

What the marker says

The Mt. Zion Baptist Association, composed of thirteen area Baptist churches, was organized on this property in 1857. The cemetery's name is derived from the use of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church sanctuary and grounds as a campsite by Confederate General John A. Wharton's Cavalry troop in 1864-1865. Although the first recorded burial is that of Guss Christopher in 1910, the presence of a number of unmarked grave sites suggests earlier burials. The cemetery contains about 140 burial sites and continues to serve as a graveyard for the surrounding rural community. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995