Clover Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture this. The year is 1856, and families are rolling into East Texas from Georgia and Alabama, looking for a place to put down roots.

They found their land, they built their lives, and then the very next year, 1857, they looked up at a hill covered in yellow clover and said, right there. That is where we build the Clover Hill Baptist Church. Now a church needs a cemetery, and a cemetery needs its first soul.

That came in 1868, when a child known as Little Buddy, the son of G. H. and Sallie Pogue, became the first burial in what would grow into the community cemetery. There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a place after something like that.

And then, not long after, a stranger came through. Nobody knew him well enough to say much. He died of smallpox, and they interred him here too.

Even a stranger gets a place on that hill. The oldest marked gravestone belongs to Martha Benton, born in 1840, died in 1862. Her story has a little twist to it.

According to custom, she was buried near her home, and later the family moved her headstone here to the hill. The stone traveled to be with the others. For decades this place kept its stories without any formal organization watching over it.

Then in 1926, the cemetery association was organized, and Clover Hill finally had people whose job it was to remember. A hill of yellow clover. Families from far away.

A child, a stranger, and a headstone that made a journey. That is what this ground holds.

What the marker says

Families from Georgia and Alabama settled this land in 1856. The next year they chose this hill which was covered with yellow clover for construction of the Clover Hill Baptist Church. In 1868 "Little Buddy," son of G. H. and Sallie Pogue, was the first burial in this community cemetery. Soon a stranger died of smallpox and was interred here. The oldest marked gravestone is that of Martha Benton (1840-1862). She was buried, according to custom, near her home and later the family moved the headstone here. In 1926 the cemetery association was organized. (1979)