Hunt Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Hunt Cemetery, out in Rusk County, Texas. Now, when a family puts down roots, the first thing they might build is a house. The second thing, if they're thinkin' clearly, is a place to remember the ones who came before.

The Hunt family understood that. Thomas Hunt, Senior, born around 1787, made the journey from Blount County, Tennessee, all the way to Rusk County in 1851. He brought his wife, Louvisa, who went by Lucy, and the whole family came with him.

They found their land, and they set aside a piece of it for a cemetery. A family cemetery. The kind of place that tells you everything about how seriously a family takes its history.

Here's the thing, though. That first burial, whenever it happened, whoever it was, it went unrecorded. Lost to time.

The oldest marked grave we know of dates from 1856. That stone belongs to Mary Finley Hunt, the first wife of Thomas Hunt, Junior. And here is where the years carry a quiet weight, because 1856 is also around the time Thomas Senior himself passed, born around 1787, gone around 1856.

The marker doesn't draw that line directly, so neither will I. What the ground holds, the ground keeps. Over the years, the Hunt Cemetery filled with more than family.

Veterans came to rest there, men who had served in the Civil War, in World War One, in World War Two. Some graves are marked with proper stones. Some are marked only with rocks pulled from the earth.

And some have no marker at all, just the memory of people who knew to look. The cemetery was formally set aside in Rusk County deed records in 1915. Official.

Recorded. Protected. That's the thing about a family that comes all the way from Tennessee with purpose.

They don't just settle the land. They make sure the land remembers them back.

What the marker says

Thomas Hunt, Sr. (c. 1787-c.1856), his wife, Louvisa (Lucy) and their family came to Rusk County from Blount County, Tennessee, in 1851. They set aside land for this family cemetery, although the first burial is not recorded. The oldest marked grave dates from 1856, as noted on the tombstone of Mary Finley Hunt, first wife of Thomas Hunt, Jr. The cemetery contains a number of unmarked graves as well as burials marked only with rocks. Veterans of armed conflicts, including the Civil War, World War I and World War II, are also buried in the Hunt Cemetery, which was formally set aside in county deed records in 1915. (2001)