Cox Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker for Cox Cemetery in Van Zandt County tells it this way, and here's how I pass it along to you. Now, every good story starts somewhere, and this one starts in the early 1850s, when Robert K. Gibbs and his family settled into this corner of East Texas.

They put down roots, they built a life, and before long, they also had to say goodbye. A gravestone for an infant daughter of R. K. and Sarah Gibbs marks the earliest documented burial in this cemetery, dated November 1853.

That's a quiet, heavy beginning for any piece of ground. The Gibbs family graveyard sat there, small and personal, holding that grief and others like it, for years to come. Then, in 1880, a man named Robert Daniel Cox acquired the land.

Born in 1842, he would live until 1898, and the name he left on this place would outlast him considerably. Now here's the thing about Robert Daniel Cox. He looked at that little Gibbs family graveyard, and he opened it up.

He offered it for use as a community cemetery. Just like that, a private sorrow became a shared one, the way cemeteries in small communities tend to do. People took him up on it, and the ground that had been the Gibbs family's alone became known as Cox Graveyard, or Cox Cemetery.

The land itself grew over time. Additions came in 1920 and again in 1933, enlarging the cemetery as the community around it continued to need it. And then there is this, something the marker does not let pass without saying: some of the unmarked graves here are believed to be those of slaves.

That part of the story belongs to this ground too, unnamed and unadorned, but not forgotten. Five generations of Cox family members are interred here, five generations carrying that name forward into the earth where it began. This marker was placed as part of the Texas Sesquicentennial, commemorating 1836 to 1986.

Some places earn their markers. Cox Cemetery is one of them.

What the marker says

Robert K. Gibbs and his family settled in this area in the early 1850s. A gravestone for an infant daughter of R. K. and Sarah Gibbs reveals the earliest documented burial in this cemetery to be November 1853. Robert Daniel Cox (1842--1898) acquired the land in 1880. He offered the small Gibbs family graveyard for use as a community cemetery. It became known as Cox Graveyard or Cox Cemetery. Land additions in 1920 and 1933 enlarged the cemetery. Some unmarked graves are believed to be those of slaves. Five generations of Cox family members are interred here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986