Mount Zion Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to give it the telling it deserves. This hill in Ellis County has been holding secrets longer than most folks care to reckon. Back in the 1850s, an Indian who would often rest on this very hill (maybe drawn by the quiet, maybe the view, who's to say) met his end at the hooves of his own wild prairie horse.

The land took him in right here, buried on the hill where he used to rest. That's where this story begins. Not long after, Sarah Witherspoon arrived in the ground nearby.

She'd been born in 1832 and was gone by 1857, one of the early Anglo-American settlers of this place, her grave the first one marked. So the hill already had two souls keeping company before most of Texas even knew this corner existed. Then 1861 comes rolling in, and Coleman Jenkins dies.

And here's where his brother Alexander steps forward. Alexander Jenkins (born 1829, and he'd live all the way to 1895) he takes that loss and does something with it. He deeds the land as a public burial ground.

Gives it over. Makes it belong to everyone. Twelve years pass, and in 1873, Alexander Jenkins helps found the Mount Zion Presbyterian Church right here on this same ground.

A church house goes up, and it pulls double duty: house of worship, house of learning, a school for the community taking root around it. For a good while, this hill is humming with the living even as it keeps the dead. But communities are restless things.

In the early 1900s, the population shifted (drifted, the way Texas towns sometimes do) and when the people moved, the church closed, and the school closed with it. The pioneer community that had gathered itself around this hill quietly came undone. What's left is the cemetery.

The Indian who rested here. Sarah Witherspoon. The Jenkins family's grief turned into a gift of land.

All of it still here, on a hill that has never once stopped keeping its people.

What the marker says

An Indian who often rested on this hill was killed by his wild prairie horse in the 1850s and buried here. Sarah Witherspoon (1832-1857), an early Anglo-American settler, was interred nearby in the first marked grave. Soon after Coleman Jenkins died in 1861, his brother Alexander (1829-1895) deeded this public burial ground. In 1873, Jenkins helped found the Mount Zion Presbyterian Church here. A church house was erected and used for school. In the early 1900s, as the population shifted, the church and school closed. The cemetery is all that remains of this pioneer community. (1979)