Hickory Grove 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 Cass County, some places hold their ground long after everything else has moved on. Hickory Grove Cemetery is one of those places.

The church that gave it a name is gone. The congregation that tended it eventually disbanded. But the cemetery remains, quiet and steady, a piece of ground that has been kept for the people who came before.

Let me tell you how it started. On October the fifteenth, eighteen seventy-two, a man named the Reverend James A. Steger signed over this site to the trustees of the Hickory Grove Methodist Church.

He deeded it specifically for use as a community burial ground. Now, Steger was born in eighteen thirty-one, and he was a Civil War veteran, which means this was a man who had already seen more than his share of what the world could do. The marker notes he may have used this very ground as a family cemetery even before that deed was signed, before the church ever had a formal claim to it.

That's the kind of detail that stays with you. A man who knew loss, tending a patch of earth, long before anyone made it official. The Methodist sanctuary itself stood north of the cemetery.

Later, a second building went up at the northwest corner, and that one served a double purpose, funerals and school classes, the kind of arrangement that frontier communities understood intuitively, because life and learning and grief all happened in the same small radius. In time, the church disbanded. Communities shift, populations move, and congregations sometimes simply reach their end.

But several pioneer families are buried here, and this cemetery stands as evidence of the area's early settlement. The ground endures. And out here on the road, that's worth pulling over for.

What the marker says

On Oct. 15, 1872, the Rev. James A. Steger (1831-1902) deeded this site to trustees of the Hickory Grove Methodist Church for use as a community burial ground. Steger, a Civil War veteran, may have used it as a family cemetery before that date. The Methodist sanctuary was located north of the cemetery and a later building, at the northwest corner, was used for funerals and school classes. The church eventually disbanded, but this cemetery, the burial place of several pioneer families, remains as evidence of the area's early settlement. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986