Edwards 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 Upshur County, there's a quiet patch of ground with a long memory. We're talking about Edwards Cemetery, and its story reaches back further than its name does.

Long before James William Cartwright Edwards ever put his name to a single deed, folks in this stretch of East Texas were already laying their loved ones to rest in this soil. The earliest recorded burial here was a little one, an infant named Josephine Rucker, in 1855. That's where the record begins, though the marker tells us the site was already being used as a graveyard for settlers of the area as early as the mid-1850s.

So the ground had already been receiving the departed for some time before anyone made it official. Now, the man who eventually gave this cemetery its name came to Texas by way of Tennessee. James William Cartwright Edwards, born in 1836, made that journey with his parents, John King and Elizabeth Billings Edwards, around 1850.

They put down roots here, and James put down something more lasting than roots. In 1912, he acquired one point six acres of land that included this very graveyard, and he set it aside formally as a family cemetery. He passed in 1913, the year after he secured that ground.

One year. Just long enough to see it done. But the story doesn't end with James.

His daughter Margie took up the cause. In 1956 she fenced a part of the cemetery, and before her death in 1962, she established a trust fund for its upkeep. She made sure somebody would always be lookin after this place, long after she was gone to join the rest of them.

From a settler's infant in 1855 to a daughter's trust fund over a century later, Edwards Cemetery has been tended, and remembered, and it's still here.

What the marker says

This site was used as a graveyard for settlers of this area as early as the mid-1850s. The earliest recorded burial here was that of the infant Josephine Rucker in 1855. The cemetery is named for James William Cartwright Edwards (1836-1913), who with his parents John King and Elizabeth Billings Edwards, moved to Texas from Tennessee about 1850. James acquired 1.6 acres, which included this graveyard, for use as a family cemetery in 1912. His daughter, Margie, fenced a part of the cemetery in 1956 and set up a trust fund for its upkeep before her death in 1962.