Sharp Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Milam County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding on to people's memories longer than most folks can reckon. Sharp Cemetery.

And like a lot of quiet places, it has a story that's worth slowing down for. The earliest marked grave belongs to Susan F. Dilworth, who died in January of 1880.

That's where the record begins, at least the marked record. But the land itself didn't become official burying ground until 1882, when John Gordon and his wife M. L.

Gordon deeded two acres on this very site to the trustees of Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church. The Gordons were specific about it, too.

The western half of that land, they said, should be used for burial purposes. Now that's the kind of instruction you write down when you want something to last. And here's the thing about lasting.

The church didn't. When Mt. Zion Presbyterian was moved and eventually demolished, gravestones were left broken and leaning.

The place fell into the kind of quiet disrepair that swallows up history if nobody's paying attention. But the Sharp community kept coming back. They kept burying their people here.

By the turn of the twentieth century, there were about fifty-six marked graves on the site, and a good many of them, more than you'd want to count, belonged to children and infants. That detail doesn't need any dramatizing. It just sits there, heavy and honest, the way grief does.

Then in 1949, people got organized. A cemetery organization formed to oversee the care and maintenance of the grounds, and additional land that had once belonged to the church was deeded over and folded into the cemetery itself. The place grew, slowly and steadily, the way communities do when they decide something matters.

By the dawn of the twenty-first century, that graveyard contained almost four hundred graves. Started with one marked stone for Susan F. Dilworth, and grew to nearly four hundred.

Sharp Cemetery held on through a demolished church, broken headstones, and the long forgetting that time brings, and it's still out there in Milam County, doing what it's always done.

What the marker says

The earliest marked grave in this graveyard is that of Susan F. Dilworth, who died in January 1880. John Gordon and his wife M. L. Gordon deeded two acres of land on this site to the trustees of Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church in 1882, stating that the western half of the land should be used for burial purposes. When the church was moved and demolished in later years, gravestones were broken and leaning, but the cemetery continued to serve the Sharp community. There were about 56 marked graves at the turn of the 20th century, many of them belonging to children and infants. A cemetery organization formed in 1949 to oversee the site's care and maintenance. Additional land that once had belonged to the church was deeded to and became part of the cemetery. At the dawn of the 21st century, the graveyard contained almost 400 graves. (2000)