Lebanon Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Way out in Hunt County, there is a piece of ground that has been holding the stories of this part of Texas since the eighteen sixties. They call it Lebanon Cemetery, and the land has a history that goes back even further than the oldest stone you can find there.

In the eighteen thirties, a pioneer woman named Rebecca Hart Williams Little made her way to this area. Think about that for a moment. The eighteen thirties.

Texas was not yet Texas in the way we know it today, and she was already here, putting down roots. By the time the eighteen seventies arrived, Rebecca Little was ready to make it official. In eighteen seventy one, she formally deeded this property for church and school purposes.

She set the land aside for her community, plain and simple. Now, that same year, eighteen seventy one, the earliest marked grave was placed. It belongs to Harlan Lindley, born in eighteen forty five, gone in that same year Rebecca signed the deed.

The cemetery would go on to receive pioneers who had carved a life out of this country, veterans who had served in the Civil War, in World War I, and in World War II, infants and children whose stories were cut short before they ever really began, and eventually Rebecca Little herself, born in eighteen eighteen, died in eighteen ninety one, finally laid to rest in the very ground she had given away for the good of others. Right next to the cemetery stood the one room Lebanon School. Generations of local children walked through that door and came out the other side knowing more than when they went in.

It stood there doing its quiet, important work until nineteen forty five, when it was razed. Gone now, except in the memory of every family that ever sent a child through its door. So here is what Lebanon Cemetery holds: the first settlers, the soldiers, the schoolchildren, and the woman who made sure this ground would mean something.

Rebecca Little gave it away in eighteen seventy one, and it has been keeping faith with her ever since.

What the marker says

This land has been used as a burial ground since the 1860s. Rebecca Hart Williams Little (1818-1891), a pioneer who came to this area in the 1830s, formally deeded the property for church and school purposes in 1871. The earliest marked grave is that of Harlan Lindley (1845-1871). Others interred here include pioneer settlers; veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II; many infants and children; and Rebecca Little. The adjacent one-room Lebanon School, razed in 1945, provided educational opportunities to generations of local children. (1991)