Concord Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker for Concord Cemetery in Houston County. Now settle in, because even a quiet graveyard has a story worth hearing. In July of 1889, a man named Armistead Albert Aldrich signed over three acres of land to the Concord Presbyterian Church.

Three acres, set aside for a church lot and a graveyard. The kind of gift that says, plainly, we are putting down roots here, and we intend to stay. Two men, J.C.

Dudley and David T. Adair, were ordained as church elders around that time, and here is where the story takes its first quiet turn. Of those two elders, it was Dudley himself who would become the cemetery's first burial, in 1895.

The man helped consecrate the ground, and then the ground consecrated him back. That is the kind of thing that sticks with you on a long road. The gravestones out there memorialize dozens of local surnames, and among the buried you'll find members of fraternal organizations and military veterans, whole chapters of a community written in stone.

Now, the land changed hands once more. In 1963, the Presbyterian church conveyed those three acres to the trustees of the Concord Cemetery Association, and that association has kept watch over this wooded burial ground ever since. The bylaws don't leave much room for argument either.

Lots are reserved for members or descendants of those already buried here, and they cannot be sold. Not for any price. The place belongs, in the most literal sense, to the people already in it, and to those who carry their names forward.

More than a hundred burials rest in that ground. Nine of them are unmarked graves. Nine souls whose names the stones did not hold onto.

But they are counted. Somebody made sure of that. Out here in the piney woods of Houston County, that wooded patch of three acres is still keeping its promises.

What the marker says

In July 1889, Armistead Albert Aldrich donated three acres of land to the Concord Presbyterian Church for a church lot and graveyard. J.C. Dudley and David T. Adair were ordained church elders, and Dudley's burial in 1895 was the cemetery's first. Gravestones memorialize dozens of local surnames, as well as fraternal organization members and military veterans. In 1963, the Presbyterian church conveyed the land to trustees of the Concord Cemetery Association, which maintains this wooded burial ground. Association bylaws state that lots are reserved for members or descendants of those already buried here and cannot be sold. Of the more than 100 burials, nine are unmarked graves. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006