Deadwood Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane's going to tell it to you. The community of Deadwood, out in Panola County, got its start in the 1830s, when the Adam LaGrone family put down roots and called the place home. Now, any community worth its salt eventually needs a place to lay its people to rest, and Deadwood was no different.

That place came into being in 1847, on the LaGrone farm itself, when Adam LaGrone's wife, Christeena, passed on. She was the first to be buried there, on land her own family had worked. Nine years later, Adam was laid to rest right beside her.

That's the kind of detail that'll sit with you a while. Nine years. Same farm, same ground, right next to the woman he'd built that life with.

Now here's a quiet little wrinkle in the story. The land didn't officially appear in Panola County deed records as a public cemetery until 1859. But the community wasn't waiting on paperwork.

Folks were already being buried there before that designation ever got written down. The ground was doing its work long before the county got around to acknowledging it. And that's maybe the most Deadwood thing about Deadwood Cemetery.

It didn't ask permission to matter. It just did. What makes this story land, though, is the last line of that marker.

The Deadwood Cemetery is still in use today, still maintained by descendants of those same pioneer families. The LaGrones and their neighbors planted something in Panola County back in the 1830s, and it is still growing.

What the marker says

The community of Deadwood was established in the 1830s by the Adam LaGrone family. A family burial ground was begun on the LaGrone farm in 1847 when Adam LaGrone's wife, Christeena, died. Adam was buried next to his wife nine years later. Although the land did not officially appear in county deed records as a public cemetery until 1859, members of the community were buried here before that time. A testament to early Panola county history, the Deadwood cemetery is still in use and maintained by descendants of pioneer families. (1988).