Sabine Town Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm tellin' it to you. Way back in the 1830s, a man named S. H.

Morris had himself a land grant out here in Sabine County. Now, Morris could have held onto every acre. Instead, he sold off 200 of them, and out of that transaction a whole town took shape.

Sabine Town, they called it. And it wasn't some sleepy little clearing in the pines. This place had a post office, a customs house, a wagon factory, a brick kiln, and a tanning yard.

The kind of town that meant to stick around. The kind of town that had plans. But towns, like people, don't always get to keep their plans.

What does stay, what tends to outlast almost everything else, is the ground where folks are laid to rest. The Sabine Town Cemetery holds 18 known graves. The earliest recorded burial is Mary Jane Scott's, in 1842.

That name, that year, is the oldest anchor we have to this ground. The cemetery stayed in use all the way until 1907, when Harry C. Maunds became the last recorded burial.

From Mary Jane Scott to Harry C. Maunds, generation after generation found their way here. Then, for a long stretch, the site sat without a caretaker.

Until 1970, when the James Frederick Gomer Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, out of Hemphill, took over maintenance of the site. They saw to it that the 18 known souls resting in Sabine Town's cemetery wouldn't be forgotten, even after the town itself had faded from the map. That's the thing about a cemetery.

The town can go quiet. But the ground remembers.

What the marker says

S. H. Morris sold 200 acres of his land grant in the 1830s for the establishment of the town of Sabine. Businesses included a post office, customs house, wagon factory, brick kiln and a tanning yard. The Sabine Town Cemetery contains 18 known graves; Mary Jane Scott's is the earliest recorded burial in 1842. The graveyard was in use until 1907; Harry C. Maunds is the last recorded burial. In 1970 the James Frederick Gomer Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in Hemphill took over maintenance of the site.