Jay Bird-Union School, Church, and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Out here in Parker County, there's a stretch of road the locals have long called Jay Bird Lane, and it's older than you might think. This well-traveled route dates all the way back to the early 1860s.

Whatever the years brought, the wagons kept rolling down that lane. Then in 1883, the landowners around these parts got together and donated three acres. Three acres, set aside to preserve the nearby Jay Bird camp meeting grounds.

That's not nothing. That's a community making a statement. Residents put up a frame building not long after, officially serving the Union Grove School Community.

But that building was pulling double duty, because the Jay Bird Freewill Baptist Church met there too. And out beside it all, a cemetery was established. The earliest marked grave dates to 1884.

School, church, and cemetery: the whole arc of a community's life, right there on those three acres. Now, the school closed in 1919. And the building itself?

Well, it didn't go quietly. A tornado came through in the 1940s and destroyed it. That's the kind of ending a building gets out here in Texas.

But the people weren't done. A structure went up in 1945, and then the Cemetery Association replaced even that one in 1974. They still gather there; first Sunday in June, every year.

Jay Bird Lane keeps right on going, and so do the people who've claimed it as their own.

What the marker says

This well-traveled route, known locally as Jay Bird Lane, dates from the early 1860s. In 1883 land-owners donated three acres to preserve the nearby Jay Bird camp meeting grounds. Residents soon built a frame building, officially serving the Union Grove School Community. The Jay Bird Freewill Baptist Church also met here, and a cemetery was established, with the earliest marked grave dating to 1884. The school closed in 1919 and the building was destroyed by a 1940's tornado. A 1945 structure was replaced in 1974 by the Cemetery Association, hosting a meeting each first Sunday in June. Texas Sesquincentennial 1836-1986.