Cedar Point Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker at Cedar Point tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture Houston County, deep East Texas, where the pines crowd close and a congregation once gathered in a brand-new building sometime before July 1885. That's when the formal organization of Cedar Point Church happened, July of 1885, and by then they already had four walls around them and a roof overhead.

Led by Presbyterian circuit preachers, the kind of men who covered more ground on horseback than most folks cover in a car today, the congregation set its priorities early and kept them firm: Christian education, music, and revivals. That was the Cedar Point way. Now, within a few years of that organization, the church began something quieter just next door.

An adjacent cemetery, growing slowly the way such places do, patient and unhurried. The first marked grave there belongs to Sam Houston Rice, and that stone dates to 1891. A name, a date, and a piece of ground that's been holding its silence ever since.

The congregation itself kept going, kept singing, kept gathering for those revivals across the decades. But membership has a way of ebbing, and by about 1946 it had ebbed past the point of no return. The church dissolved.

The building fell quiet. Here's the part that stays with you, though. After the church disbanded, a cemetery association formed up, and that association has maintained the grounds ever since.

The congregation that started it is gone. The circuit preachers are long gone. But somebody is still out there keepin' the grass down and the stones standing.

Cedar Point may have dissolved in 1946, but it hasn't been forgotten. Not quite yet.

What the marker says

Formal organization of the Cedar Point Church occurred in July 1885, shortly after a church building was constructed at this site. Led by Presbyterian circuit preachers, the congregation placed emphasis on Christian education, music, and revivals until a declining membership led to dissolution about 1946. Within a few years of its organization, the Cedar Point Church began the adjacent cemetery in which the first marked grave, that of Sam Houston Rice, dates to 1891. A cemetery association, formed after the church disbanded, has maintained the grounds over the years.