Cobb Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker for Cobb Cemetery in Limestone County is the story I'm carrying down the road with you today. Now, every cemetery has a beginning, and this one starts with a family on the move. In 1833, Brinkley Davis packed up his family, including his daughter Mary Ellen, and made the long journey from Indiana to this stretch of Texas.

Two years later, in 1835, the Mexican government granted Brinkley Davis roughly four thousand five hundred acres of land, and the country around it came to be known as Davis Prairie. That's a name that sticks to a place the way good clay sticks to boot leather. Meanwhile, down in Alabama, a man named Pinckney Cobb was growing up.

He came to Texas in the early 1840s, and he must have liked what he found, because in 1845 he married Mary Ellen Davis, the very daughter who had made that journey from Indiana with her father. Together, Pinckney and Mary Ellen eventually had nine children. Nine.

On the Texas frontier. You already know that life out here did not hand out many easy days. The cemetery itself was established on Cobb family land in the 1850s.

But the earliest marked grave belongs to Brinkley Davis, who died in 1852. The man who had carried his family out of Indiana, earned that sprawling land grant, and given his name to the whole surrounding prairie, he was the first to be laid to rest in ground his son-in-law's family would keep for generations. Then came losses that remind you just how unsparing this land could be.

William Neri, the second child of Pinckney and Mary Ellen Cobb, died in 1855 at the age of six. And Pinckney Cobb himself, the man who had come out of Alabama and built a life on Davis Prairie, died at age forty-five in 1866 and was interred here. Seven months before his youngest son was born.

Pinckney never knew that child. That detail has a weight to it that no amount of dramatic retelling can improve. The Cobb family kept finding themselves back at this ground.

Another son, George Levi, was twenty years old when he died and was buried here in 1872. In 1887, County Judge L. B.

Cobb donated a parcel of land joining the west side of the cemetery, making sure there would be room for what was still to come. And there was plenty still to come. The surrounding communities sent their early settlers here, people who had carved out lives on this prairie and whose stories are now marked, or in some cases not marked at all, by the stones and the silences between them.

The site was cared for by family and community members for decades. It was World War II that changed the arithmetic of the place. As the area population decreased during the war years, it became necessary to pay for cemetery maintenance.

The hands that had always come without being asked were simply fewer. Some of the burials here carry their own separate stories. Nathaniel G.

Hudson came to Texas in 1836. In 1841 he joined the Santa Fe expedition, and from 1841 to 1843 he was held prisoner in Mexico. He made it back, and he is buried here.

Also interred on these grounds is Nathaniel P. Hudson, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and seven Confederate veterans. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, nine hundred and sixty-four graves graced the cemetery grounds.

Two hundred and twenty-seven of them unidentified. That number, two hundred and twenty-seven, is perhaps the most sobering thing the marker tells us. Many of the early graves are those of infants and small children, and the marker calls them exactly what they are: testaments to the harsh conditions of pioneer life.

Cobb Cemetery started with one family movin' in from Indiana and grew into the shared resting place of a whole corner of Limestone County. The land held them all. It still does.

What the marker says

Brinkley Davis and his family, including his daughter Mary Ellen, moved to this area from Indiana in 1833. Brinkley Davis received a land grant of about 4500 acres from the Mexican government in 1835, and the surrounding area became known as Davis Prairie. A native of Alabama, Pinckney Cobb came to Texas in the early 1840s. He married Mary Ellen Davis in 1845, and they eventually had nine children. This cemetery was established on Cobb family land in the 1850s. Brinkley Davis died in 1852 and his is the earliest marked grave. William Neri, the second child of Pinckney and Mary Ellen Cobb, died at the age of six in 1855. Pinckney Cobb died at age 45 and was interred here in 1866, seven months before his youngest son was born. Another Cobb son, George Levi, was 20 when he died and was buried here in 1872. County Judge l. B. Cobb donated a parcel of land joining the west side of the cemetery in 1887. Many early settlers of the surrounding communities are interred here. The site was cared for by family and community members until the area population decreased during World War II and it became necessary to pay for cemetery maintenance. Other burials of interest include that of Nathaniel G. Hudson, who came to Texas in 1836, joined the Santa Fe expedition in 1841 and was held prisoner in Mexico from 1841 to 1843. Nathaniel P. Hudson, a veteran of the Spanish American War, also is interred here, as are seven Confederate veterans. At the dawn of the 21st century, 964 graves (227 unidentified) graced the cemetery grounds. Many early graves are those of infants and small children, testaments to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. (2000)