Mount Capers Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Mount Capers Cemetery, out in San Jacinto County. Pull up a chair, because this one starts with a woman who carried quite a name and quite a history. Sarah Washington Ricks Durdin Chrznowski.

Born in 1819, gone by 1894, and somewhere in between, probably in the 1860s, she made a gift that outlasted nearly everything else around it. She donated land for a cemetery, carving it out of the estate of her late husband, James T. Durdin, who had died back in 1859.

Now, the marker is careful to note that no deed exists for that donation. Just the land, just the graves, and the long memory of the people who kept coming back to tend both. The cemetery took its name from the Mount Capers Baptist Chapel next door, a church built by the Reverend L.

R. Capers. That name stuck to the ground itself, the way names do in places like this.

Tradition holds that the first grave here belonged to a man named Elisha Williams. Then, in December of 1871, a small grave was added, an infant boy named James Tarpley Knight, the grandson of the very woman who had given the land in the first place. The oldest headstone you can still read is dated 1873.

And the ground kept receiving the dead, quietly, year after year. It wasn't until August of 1971 that the Mount Capers Cemetery Association finally received a proper deed, four acres, signed and recorded, making official what had been understood for over a century. Today there are a hundred graves here, maybe more.

A woman donated land from a dead husband's estate, probably without a deed, and a hundred souls found a place to rest because of it. Some gifts don't need paperwork to hold.

What the marker says

Sarah Washington Ricks Durdin Chrznowski (1819-94) donated land for this cemetery from estate of her late husband, James. T. Durdin (d. 1859), probably in 1860s, although no deed exists. Cemetery was named for adjacent Mount Capers Baptist Chapel, built by the Rev. L. R. Capers. According to tradition, first grave was for Elisha Williams; James Tarpley Knight, an infant grandson of land donor, was interred in Dec. 1871. Oldest legible headstone is dated 1873. The Mount Capers Cemetery Association received in Aug. 1971 a deed to four acres of land here. There are 100 or more graves.