Moss Hill Community Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it along just as it stands. Out here in Tyler County, the land has a way of holding memory, and this little patch of ground called Moss Hill Community Cemetery holds quite a bit of it. It starts, the way a lot of good stories do, with an act of generosity.

In 1906, a Tyler County resident named John Cruse donated two acres, right here, to the Moss Hill community. Two acres set aside for church and cemetery purposes. Simple as that, and as lasting as anything you could name.

Now, local tradition says the cemetery came to be in the early nineteen hundreds because the membership of Moss Hill's Baptist Church was seeing a rising number of deaths among its own. The community needed a place to lay its people to rest with dignity. And though the ground itself tells an older story, those unmarked grave sites suggesting burials that came before the records could catch up, the first documented interment belongs to Lane Siggers, in 1907.

From there the names begin to accumulate, each one a whole life carried in a date. Harriet Barlow in 1913. Ellis Gilder in 1916.

Lottie Blackmon in 1917. Willie Blackmon in 1918. David Rigsby in 1922.

J. C. McCartney in 1926.

Lizziebeth Cluff in 1926. Civic leaders, religious leaders, people who shaped this corner of East Texas, many of them rest here. For decades the cemetery stood as a place of remembrance.

Then in the early 1980s, a group of local citizens decided it needed more than memory. They formed the Moss Hill Cemetery Committee, dedicated to maintaining the grounds. They held garage sales, bake sales, other projects, and they raised enough to purchase and install a fence around the place.

And every fall, the community gathers here for a homecoming, tending the grounds and tending the bonds between the living and the ones who made the ground worth tending. That's a tradition. That's how a community keeps faith with itself, one season at a time.

What the marker says

To help recognize its African American heritage, Tyler County resident John Cruse donated two acres here in 1906 to the Moss Hill community for church and cemetery purposes. According to local tradition the cemetery was established in the early 1900s because of the rising number of deaths within the membership of Moss Hill's Baptist Church. Although evidence of several unmarked grave sites suggests prior burials, the first documented interment was that of Lane Siggers in 1907. Other early burials include those of Harriet Barlow in 1913, Ellis Gilder in 1916, Lottie Blackmon in 1917, Willie Blackmon in 1918, David Rigsby in 1922, J. C. McCartney in 1926, and Lizziebeth Cluff in 1926. The cemetery contains the grave sites of many of this area's most prominent civic and religious leaders. In the early 1980s a group of local citizens formed the Moss Hill Cemetery Committee to help maintain the cemetery grounds. The committee sponsored garage and bake sales and other projects which raised sufficient funds to purchase and install a fence. Members of the community established a tradition of meeting during the fall of each year for a cemetery homecoming and grounds maintenance.