Pine Crest Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's what I know about Pine Crest Cemetery, and I'll give it to you straight. Up on the highest elevation in Atlanta, Texas, there's a place that's been holding the town's history longer than most folks realize. The first two acres of this site were formally deeded to the city for cemetery use by Preston Rose Scott in 1887.

That's the official beginning. But the ground itself had other ideas about when it started keeping souls. The earliest marked grave belongs to Esthre Fitts, dated August 7, 1878, and that date alone tells you people were being laid to rest here nearly a decade before any deed changed hands.

The land was already a burial ground. The paperwork just caught up later. Now, the cemetery also holds a segregated area, once divided from the rest by a fence.

That fence is gone now, removed, but the history it represents is not erased. The oldest grave in that area is that of R.A. Williams, who died in 1880.

Those names, those dates, they deserve to be said plainly and remembered. The cemetery kept growin over the years. The H.G.

Goree Estate gave a four-acre gift in 1934, and a land acquisition in 1984 expanded things further still. Today, on that high ground in Atlanta, the descendants of those who developed this area continue to come here, to honor their veterans and their loved ones. Some places, the longer you stand in them, the more they speak.

Pine Crest Cemetery has been speaking since before it even had a name.

What the marker says

Located on the highest elevation of Atlanta, the first two acres of this site were formally deed to the city for cemetery use by Preston Rose Scott in 1887. The earliest marked grave, that of Esthre Fitts, dated August 7, 1878, indicates its earlier use as a burial ground. The oldest grave in a segregated area once separated by a fence, now removed, is that of R.A. Williams (d. 1880). A four-acre gift by the H.G. Goree Estate in 1934, and a land acquisition in 1984, have allowed for the growth of this cemetery where the descendants of those who developed the Atlanta area continue to honor their veterans and loved ones. Historic Texas cemetery-2001