Crim's Chapel Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Rusk County, there's a quiet acre of ground that holds more history than its size might suggest. The place is called Crim's Chapel Cemetery, and the story of how it came to be starts with a family that had already made one long journey before they ever set foot in Texas.

Abraham B. Crim, his wife Jo Anna Armstrong Crim, and nine of their grown children packed up their lives in Alabama and made the move to Rusk County in 1867. Nine grown children.

That's not a family relocating, that's a whole community pickin' up and movin' at once. And wherever the Crims went, they had a way of putting down roots. Now, it is believed that people were already being laid to rest at this site before 1882.

The exact year those first interments happened, nobody can say for certain. But 1882 is the year the record gets clear, and it gets clear in the hardest way possible. That year, Jo Anna, wife of Abraham B.

Crim, was buried here. Hers is the earliest marked grave. And if that weren't enough sorrow for one year, that same year the Crims' daughter Louisa, known by then as Louisa Armstrong, was buried here too.

Mother and daughter, the same year. Abraham B. Crim must have stood on that ground and known, in the way a man sometimes does, that this place had become something permanent.

So in 1883, he made it official. He formally set aside one acre as a burial ground. One acre.

Not a grand gesture, just a man doing right by his people and by the neighbors who had built a life alongside him. And that's what this cemetery holds. Most of the early graves belong to his family, but the other gravesites are those of the pioneer settlers of the Crim's Chapel community.

The Crims didn't just bring their family to Rusk County. They brought a place that would outlast all of them.

What the marker says

It is believed interments were made at this site prior to 1882, when Jo Anna (Armstrong) Crim, the wife of Abraham B. Crim, was buried here. Hers is the earliest marked grave. That same year, the Crim's daughter Louisa (Crim) Armstrong was buried here. The Crims and nine of their grown children had migrated to Rusk County from Alabama in 1867. Abraham B. Crim formally set aside one acre for a burial ground in 1883, and most of the early graves are those of his family. Other gravesites belong to pioneer settlers of the Crim's Chapel community.