Oklahoma Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about Oklahoma Cemetery, out in Montgomery County. Now, every place has to get its name from somewhere. The story handed down around here — and I do mean handed down, because nobody wrote it in a ledger — goes like this.

A Mr. Sanders told a Mr. Leslie he was pulling up stakes and moving to Oklahoma.

Then he moved near here instead. And so the settlement got called Oklahoma. Make of that what you will.

The marker calls it oral tradition, and that's exactly what it is — the kind of story that lives in the telling, not the courthouse. But the cemetery itself, that's where the story gets quieter and heavier. George W.

Snook, born in 1849, and his wife Bonnie Jerome Goodson Snook, born in 1863, were the ones who first set aside an acre of this ground as a burial place. The reason was the hardest kind. Their young daughter, Jessie Snook — born in 1890 — fell ill and died in 1894.

She was a little girl. Before she passed, the last place Jessie had visited was a tree. A tree that a storm had uprooted.

And so her parents buried her nearby. That detail right there — that the last place she'd been was that fallen tree, and they wouldn't let her rest far from it — that's not policy, that's not tradition. That's just love, doing the only thing left it could do.

George lived until 1939. Bonnie lived until 1939 as well. They outlasted their little girl by decades, carrying that acre of ground with them all those years.

Then came Jessie's uncle — her mother's brother, John Henry Goodson, born in 1867. In 1903, he donated another acre to the site. Just like that, the cemetery doubled.

And it has kept on growing since, becoming what the marker calls a chronicle — a chronicle of the families of this corner of Montgomery County. A chronicle. That's a fine word for it.

Every stone a sentence. Every name a chapter. Started by a family who just couldn't bring themselves to bury their daughter too far from the last tree she ever touched.

That's Oklahoma Cemetery. And now you know the story behind the ground.

What the marker says

Oral tradition says that when a Mr. Sanders told a Mr. Leslie he was moving to Oklahoma, but he moved near here instead, the settlement was named "Oklahoma." George W. Snook (1849-1939) and Bonnie Jerome Goodson Snook (1863-1939) were the first to set aside an acre here for a burial ground when their young daughter, Jessie Snook (1890-1894), became ill and died. A tree uprooted by a storm was the last place she had visited so they buried her nearby. The girl's uncle, John Henry Goodson (1867-1958), also donated an acre to this site in 1903. It doubled in size since then, remaining a chronicle of the families of this area of Montgomery County. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001