Cotton Gin Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker for Cotton Gin Cemetery in Freestone County. Here's what it says. Now, every place has a beginning, and this one starts in 1845, when a woman named Margarette Wills came to this area.

She didn't come alone. She brought her slaves, and she brought her son, James S. Wills.

Whatever that journey looked like, whatever it cost, they arrived. And that was the seed of something that would outlast all of them. By 1848, James S.

Wills, who would go by Doctor, is credited with establishing the Cotton Gin community itself. And according to family history, it was Dr. Wills who gave the land for a public cemetery.

He laid it out with separate sections, one for Anglo Americans, one for African Americans. Now, when you walk a cemetery looking for the oldest name you can still read, you're doing a kind of archaeology. Here, the oldest legible gravestone in the Anglo section belongs to Mary Manning, who died in 1854 at the age of fifty-nine.

After her, the next identifiable death date is 1858, an infant daughter of J. W. and A. A.

Story. No first name recorded. Just gone, and remembered only by the year.

But the ground holds soldiers too. Abraham Roland, born around 1794 and died in 1868, fought in the War of 1812. Let that sink in for a moment.

A man who stood in that war is buried right here in Freestone County. And then there are the Civil War veterans. At least sixty-seven of them, interred in this cemetery, alongside veterans of other major conflicts.

Sixty-seven is not a small number for one piece of ground in one Texas county. Margarette Wills arrived with her family in 1845. What grew from that arrival, quietly, over generations, is a cemetery that has been holding the stories of an entire community ever since.

Some of those stories are still legible. Some have worn smooth with time. But the ground remembers.

What the marker says

Margarette Wills, her slaves and her son James S. Wills came to this area in 1845. Dr. James S. Wills is credited with the establishment of the Cotton Gin community in 1848. According to family history, Dr. Wills gave the land for a public cemetery with separate sections for Anglo and African Americans. Though it is likely that there were earlier burials, the oldest legible gravestone in the Anglo section is that of Mary Manning, who died in 1854 at 59. The next identifiable death date is that of an infant daughter of J. W. and A. A. Story, buried in 1858. Among the military veterans interred here is Abraham Roland (ca. 1794-1868), who fought in the War of 1812. There are at least 67 Civil War veterans interred here, as well as veterans of other major conflicts. (1999)