DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Perryman Cemetery in Montague County. The first marked grave in this burial ground belongs to an infant who died in 1862. That's where it all begins — not with a great general or a founding father, but with the smallest kind of loss, in a hard country, in the middle of a war.
And it only gets harder from there. The very next year, 1863, a well-digger named Mr. Jones was killed by Indians.
A man who came to dig down into the earth, and the earth is where he stayed. Then there are Dory Booher and Ben Steadham — two former Confederate soldiers who had been captured at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, during the Civil War. Whatever roads led them back from that, they ended up here, in this ground in Montague County.
In 1883, a man named Levi Perryman purchased the cemetery and deeded it to Montague County. Perryman, born in 1839 and gone by 1921, was himself no stranger to the rough edges of this land. The marker calls him a Forestburg community leader — but before that title came, he had been a Confederate soldier, an Indian fighter, and a sheriff.
He'd seen enough of life in Texas to know that a community needs somewhere to put its dead, and he made sure Forestburg had that. The cemetery is still used today. And that, right there, is the thing that'll sit with you.
All those names — the nameless infant, the well-digger Jones, Booher, Steadham, Levi Perryman himself — they're not relics behind glass. They're neighbors to the newly departed, still receiving. The pioneers planted themselves in this ground, and the ground is still growing.
What the marker says
The first marked grave in this burial ground is than of an infant who died in 1862. Other burials include those of a Mr. Jones, a well-digger killed by indians in 1863, and Dory Booher and Ben Steadham, former Confederate soldiers who had been captured at Lookout Mountain, Tenn. during the Civil War. In 1883 the cemetery was purchased by Levi Perryman (1839-1921) and deeded to Montague County. A Forestburg community leader, Perryman had been a Confederate soldier, an indian fighter, and sheriff. Still used, this cemetery serves as a reminder of the area's pioneers. (1983)