Lafayette Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Lafayette Cemetery, out in Upshur County. Now, every community out here in East Texas has a beginning, and the Lafayette community's beginning has a name attached to it: Matthew F. Locke.

Early settler, the marker calls him, and that title carries weight. This was the 1850s, when this stretch of Texas was still being claimed and shaped. Locke named the community for his son, Lafayette Locke, and that name took root right along with everything else the settlers were planting.

In 1858, Locke deeded three acres of his land to the Philadelphia Baptist Church, and the purpose was clear from the start: a cemetery. But here's the thing about that ground. It already held two family burials before the deed was ever signed.

The land had been keeping its quiet watch before anyone thought to make it official. The oldest documented grave there belongs to T. E.

Montgomery, Locke's own brother-in-law, who died in 1855. Three years before the deed, three years before the church took stewardship of those acres, Montgomery was already resting in that soil. Communities rise, and communities fade.

The Lafayette community began to decline in the 1920s, and eventually the bustle and the everyday life of the place wound down to stillness. But the cemetery remained. It and other nearby graveyards stand there yet, visible reminders, the marker says, of the area's pioneer heritage.

Some stories get told in courthouses and newspapers. Others get told in stone, in three acres of East Texas earth, in the name of a settler's son carried forward through time.

What the marker says

The Lafayette community, named by early settler Matthew F. Locke for his son, Lafayette Locke, developed in this area in the 1850s. Locke deeded three acres of land to the Philadelphia Baptist Church for a cemetery in 1858. The land, which already contained two family burials, became known as Lafayette Cemetery. The oldest documented grave is that of T. E. Montgomery, Locke's brother-in-law, who died in 1855. Although the community began to decline in the 1920s, this and other nearby graveyards serve as visible reminders of the area's pioneer heritage. (1992)