DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, before there was much of anything out here, there was a creek called Five Mile, and a family that packed up everything they had in Kentucky and headed to Texas to take their chances with the Peters Colony. Abraham and Lucy Bast — she was born a Myers — made that journey with seven children in tow.
Seven. Let that settle on you a moment. The Basts put down roots, and by 1859, Abraham had done something that says a lot about a man's character.
He donated one acre of his land — right there on the south side of Five Mile Creek — for a nondenominational church and school. Not just for one congregation, not just for his neighbors who prayed the same way he did. For anyone.
That same year, the burial ground beside it received its earliest known graves. One of those graves belongs to Abraham Bast himself. The other belongs to a man named Arthur Ledbetter.
Now Ledbetter had been in Dallas County eleven years by then, and in that time he had established four Baptist churches. Four. A man who spent his years here building communities, and the ground he helped consecrate became his final resting place.
James Horton and David King also stepped forward, donating land for the church and the graveyard. That's what this place was — a gathering of people who kept giving, kept building, kept burying their dead with care. Among the hundreds laid to rest in Five Mile Cemetery are area pioneers and two Confederate soldiers.
The Five Mile Baptist Church eventually moved to another site in the 1960s, but the cemetery didn't go anywhere. It's still in use today — still receiving the people of this land, still keeping faith with everyone who came before. Some places carry weight not because of what was built on them, but because of what was given.
Abraham Bast gave an acre. And somehow, that acre is still holding.
What the marker says
Abraham and Lucy (Myers) Bast and their seven children moved here from Kentucky to join the Peters Colony. In 1859, Abraham Bast donated one acre for a nondenominational church and school on the south side of Five Mile Creek. The adjacent burial ground may have been used in the 1840s, but the earliest known graves are those of Bast and Arthur Ledbetter from 1859. Ledbetter lived in Dallas County eleven years and established four Baptist churches. James Horton and David King also donated land for the church and graveyard. Burials include area pioneers and two Confederate soldiers. Five Mile Baptist Church moved to another site in the 1960s. The cemetery has hundreds of burials and is still in use. Historic Texas Cemetery -2008