High Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about High Cemetery, out there in Van Zandt County. Now, every graveyard's got a story, and this one starts the way a lot of Texas stories start: with somebody who got there first. The High community was established, and then, six years on, in 1859, a woman named Nancy Jane Hubbard became the first soul laid to rest in what would become the High Cemetery.

That's a particular kind of distinction. Not the kind anybody asks for, but the kind history remembers. More than a hundred graves in that place date from the nineteenth century alone.

Think about that the next time you're driving through Van Zandt County. A hundred lives, a hundred stories, all rooted in that same patch of ground. Among those buried there is Samuel A.

High, born in 1809, died in 1894, and the marker names him as the first permanent landowner in the area. He also donated the land for the cemetery itself. So in a way, he gave that ground to his community twice: once to live on, and once to rest in.

Veterans of the Civil War are interred there too, alongside members of other pioneer families and their descendants, generations of them, layered into that soil like the rings of an old post oak. The marker was placed in 1986, the year of the Texas Sesquicentennial, marking a hundred and fifty years of the state itself. Fitting, maybe, that a cemetery marking the earliest roots of a community would get its recognition right then.

Some places hold time differently than others. High Cemetery is one of them.

What the marker says

The first burial in this public cemetery, that of Nancy Jane Hubbard, took place in 1859, six years after the High community was first established. More than 100 graves date from the 19th century. Many members of the High family, including Samuel A. High (1809-1894), first permanent landowner in the area and original donor of land for the cemetery, are buried here. Also interred in the High cemetery are veterans of the Civil War and members of other pioneer families and their descendants. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986