Pickwick-McAdams Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Palo Pinto County, there's a cemetery that holds more history than it might first let on. Two communities, two burial grounds, and a lake that swallowed one of them whole.

Let me take you back to the beginning. Captain William Carroll McAdams was a Tennessee native, born in 1825. He came to Texas in the 1840s, and he didn't come to sit still.

He served as a Texas Ranger, and he fought in the Mexican War, which ran from 1846 to 1848. By 1854, McAdams and his wife Ann, born an Alexander, had acquired this particular piece of Palo Pinto land, and they set about raising cattle. A man who'd ranged and soldiered, now running cattle on Texas ground.

That's a life with some mileage on it. The cemetery itself came later. It opened after the death of Mrs.

McAdams. The marker doesn't tell us exactly when she passed, just that her passing is what opened this ground to the departed. The first marked grave belongs to Mary M.

Couger, placed in 1889. Captain McAdams himself lived until 1906. For years, this cemetery served the Pickwick Community.

Now, here's where the story gets its weight. The Pickwick Community is gone now. Not abandoned, not relocated, gone, because it's sitting under a lake.

Possum Kingdom Lake. When that lake was proposed, the old Carter Bend Cemetery stood right in its path. In 1940, those graves were moved, brought here to rest alongside the McAdams plot, safe above the waterline.

Two communities sharing one piece of high ground, one of them remembered only by the people buried here and the water lapping somewhere below. Captain McAdams came to Texas looking for a place to plant roots. He found one.

It just turns out, it needed to hold more than he ever planned for.

What the marker says

Tennessee native Capt. William Carroll McAdams (1825-1906) came to Texas in the 1840s, served as a Texas Ranger, and fought in the Mexican war (1846-1848). McAdams and his wife Ann (Alexander) acquired this land in 1854 and began cattle raising. The cemetery opened after the death of Mrs. McAdams. The first marked grave is that of Mary M. Couger in 1889. McAdams Cemetery served the Pickwick Community (now under the lake). In 1940 graves were moved here from Carter Bend Cemetery which was on the proposed Possum Kingdom Lake site. (1979)