Meador Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Sabine County, there's a place where a garden became something more than a garden. Let me take you there.

A man named Dr. Richard A. Meador, born in Virginia in 1808, made his way to Sabine County in 1844, and he brought his wife Mary Ann with him.

She was born a Tucker, in 1818, and together they built a home near this very site. You can picture it, a new place, a fresh start, a family putting down roots in East Texas soil. Then 1850 came, and it brought grief with it.

Their young child Sarah died. And here's the thing about 1844 Sabine County: there was no public cemetery. Not one.

So the Meadors did what people do when the world doesn't offer what you need. They buried little Sarah in their garden. Now some gardens grow vegetables.

Some grow flowers. This one grew into something that would outlast the family's own lifetimes. Dr.

Meador himself was gone by 1853. Mary Ann carried on until 1864. And one by one, other family members, many of them described as important figures in the development of Sabine County, were laid to rest in that same ground.

The garden had a new name by then. The Meador Family Cemetery. Today there are approximately forty graves there, and they don't go untended.

The Meador Family Cemetery Association keeps watch over the place. A child named Sarah, buried in a garden because there was nowhere else, started all of it.

What the marker says

Virginia-born Dr. Richard A. Meador (1808-1853) and his wife Mary Ann (Tucker) (1818-1864) came to Sabine County in 1844 and built a home near this site. Their young child Sarah died in 1850 and the family buried here in their garden since there was no public cemetery at that time. The garden was firmly established as the Meador Family Cemetery with the burial of other family members, many of whom were important in the development of Sabine County. There are approximately forty graves here which are maintained by the Meador Family Cemetery Association. (1983)