Pitts Family Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Pitts Family Cemetery in Camp County. Now, some places have cemeteries. And then some places have cemeteries that hold the very people who built the town around them.

Pittsburg, Texas, falls into that second category. According to family history, the Pitts Family Cemetery was established by William Harrison Pitts, the founder of Pittsburg itself. The man put his name on the town and his family in the ground beside it.

That is a particular kind of rootedness. The earliest burial on this site was Sarah Richardson Harvey Pitts, the third wife of W. H.

Pitts and mother of their daughter Ella, laid to rest in 1862. Not long after, in 1863, Confederate Corporal Joseph H. Pitts was buried here as well.

The ground was already holding history before the war had even finished writing itself. But Sarah and Joseph are just the beginning of who rests here. W.

H. Pitts' mother, Drucilla Neal Pitts, is interred on this site, along with five of his eight siblings. Five of eight.

That is not a family that scattered to the wind. These Pittses, this large and determined clan, had left their Georgia plantations and reestablished their households on the Texas frontier in the mid-nineteenth century. They came together, they stayed together, and when they passed, they were laid to rest together.

They shaped early Camp County. They watched Pittsburg grow from raw frontier into a thriving village. And now this cemetery stands as a chronicle, the marker's own word, of that early Camp County history and culture.

The town carries the family's name. The ground carries the family itself. Some legacies you build in wood and commerce, and some you plant deeper than that.

What the marker says

The Pitts Family Cemetery was established by William Harrison Pitts, founder of Pittsburg, according to family history. The earliest burial on this site was that of Sarah Richardson Harvey Pitts, the third wife of W. H. Pitts and mother of their daughter Ella, in 1862. Confederate Corporal Joseph H. Pitts was buried her in 1863. Others interred here include W. H. Pitts' mother, Drucilla Neal Pitts, and five of his eight siblings. These members of the large Pitts family left their Georgia plantations and reestablished their households here on the Texas frontier in the mid-19th century. They shaped early Camp County and saw Pittsburg grow into a thriving village. The cemetery remains a chronicle of early Camp County history and culture. (2000)