Pine Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm working straight from the official marker on Pine Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church and Cemetery, up in Hopkins County. Here's how the story reads. Now, 1864 is a year most Texans remember for hardship.

The Civil War was still grinding away somewhere to the east, and yet out here in Hopkins County, a man named J. G. L.

Davis gathered a small group of charter members and organized a church. Think about that for a moment. The world outside was coming apart at the seams, and these folks were building something meant to last.

It lasted, all right. More than a century of lastin', by the marker's own accounting. The congregation didn't acquire its present property until 1883, nearly two decades after that first gathering.

But once they put down roots on this ground, they stayed. Several church buildings have stood on this same piece of Hopkins County earth over the years, one after another, each one carrying the congregation forward. The most recent of those buildings went up in 1954.

Not the first, and who's to say it'll be the last. Right alongside the church sits the Pine Hill Cemetery, and that ground holds its own kind of story. More than a hundred and twenty-five graves are there, marked and unmarked both.

The cemetery dates to at least 1873, and that phrasing, at least, does a lot of quiet work. It means somebody was already burying their dead here before anyone thought to write it down carefully. The earliest burial the record actually documents belongs to a man named James Thompson, born in 1805 and laid to rest in 1873.

He was there at what appears to be the very beginning of this ground's purpose, his grave the oldest anchor in a yard that would grow and grow. And the church itself keeps going. Still serving people across a wide rural area, same as it always has.

J. G. L.

Davis and those charter members set something in motion in 1864 that a cemetery, several buildings, and more than a century of Sundays have not managed to stop. In Hopkins County, that's what they call rich heritage. And out here on the road, I'd say that's a fine way to put it.

What the marker says

Organized in 1864 by J. G. L. Davis and a small group of charter members, this church has served its rural community for well over a century. This property, acquired in 1883, has been the site of several church buildings, the last constructed in 1954. The adjacent Pine Hill Cemetery, containing over 125 marked and unmarked graves, dates to at least 1873. The earliest documented burial in the graveyard is that of James Thompson (1805-1873). Still serving people in a wide rural area, the church and cemetery reflect the community's rich heritage.