Sargent Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to give it its due. Now, six graves don't sound like much. Six is a small number.

You could count them on one hand and have fingers left over. But every one of those six has a story, and together they span the better part of a century in Matagorda County, Texas — and the family that fills them came a long, long way to get here. George Thomas Sargent was born in 1791, and by 1834 he had gathered up his family and made the crossing from England to Texas.

That's not a small thing. That's an ocean, a new land, a new life. They settled in, and then in 1838 they moved to Matagorda County, where George Thomas Sargent became a major landowner.

A man who crossed an ocean and still wasn't done moving until he found the right patch of ground. Now, the cemetery that bears the Sargent name holds six souls, and the first — the very first to be laid to rest there — was not George Thomas himself. It was his grandson, Jacob Smith, Jr., born in 1843 and gone by 1859.

Sixteen years on this earth, and the first to break that ground. That's how these old family plots begin, more often than we'd like to admit. The second burial came in August of 1872 — Frank J.

Freeman, a great-grandson. The family tree was already putting down deep roots, even as it was losing branches. And then came 1875.

George T. Sargent, who had sailed from England, who had planted himself in Matagorda County, who had outlasted so many — he drowned in the storm of 1875. His daughter-in-law, Sarah Ann, drowned alongside him in that same storm.

The land that had welcomed them could not protect them from the water. George Thomas Sargent was born in 1791. He lived to see 1875.

And in the end, it was a Texas storm that took him. The last two to be buried in that small plot were Cornelia Smith Freeman — a granddaughter, who died in 1883 — and her husband, Henry H. Freeman, who died in 1908.

They went in together, in a sense, the way couples sometimes do, just separated by time. Six graves. One family.

England to Texas, 1834 to 1908. And somewhere out in Matagorda County, that cemetery still holds all of them — the boy lost young, the great-grandson, the patriarch taken by a storm, his daughter-in-law beside him, and the last two resting quiet at the end of it all. Some legacies are written in land.

This one is written in six graves, and the ground remembers every name.

What the marker says

George Thomas Sargent (1791-1875) and his family came to Texas from England in 1834. In 1838 they moved to Matagorda county, where Sargent became a major landowner. This family cemetery contains six graves. The first to be interred here was a Sargent grandson, Jacob Smith, Jr. (1843-1859). The second burial was that of a great-grandson, Frank J. Freeman, in August 1872. George T. Sargent and his daughter - in - law, Sarah Ann, drowned in the storm of 1875. Granddaughter Cornelia Smith Freeman (d. 1883) and her husband, Henry H. Freeman (d. 1908), were the last to be buried here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986