Skinner Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker record, so let's see what the ground out here in Denton County remembers. Now, in the early days of Pilot Point, a man and woman by the names of Richard and Lucinda Skinner (she was a Glasscock before she married) set aside two and forty-four hundredths acres of their land to serve as a cemetery. That's not a grand gesture on paper.

But out on the Texas frontier, carving out ground for the dead is one of the quietest, most serious things a family can do. The first recorded burial came in March of 1858. A five-year-old boy.

Josiah Taylor. And if that name lands heavy, hold on; because the following July, his father, Josiah Senior, was laid in that same ground. The cemetery had barely begun, and already it was keeping the hardest kind of record.

Most of the people who would come to rest here were of Anglo-Saxon Protestant descent, and they had traveled a long road to get to Pilot Point. Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee; those were the places they came from. Farmers and ranchers, by and large.

People who worked the land while they were living and eventually became part of it. Among the significant graves, there's J. D.

Merchant, Senior, a local businessman. The marker notes he built the first brick building in the area. That's the kind of detail that sticks.

Everybody else was probably still working in wood and hope, and this man went and put up brick. But the cemetery also holds stories that don't have any triumph in them. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1872 and 1873, Prissie and Sarah Wilson (sisters) both died.

Within two months of one another. Yellow fever moved fast and it moved mean, and it did not spare families the particular cruelty of taking people close together. Then there's this: two people named James Graham, born on the same date, two years apart.

Different men, same name, same birthday. And they died on the same September day in 1867. Now, the marker doesn't explain that.

It just states it. And maybe that's the right call; because some coincidences don't need explaining. They just need to be said out loud, slowly, so the weight of them settles in.

Lucinda Skinner herself is buried here. The woman who helped set this land aside in the first place. The marker tells us she was the last charter member of the Pilot Point First Baptist Church, and she died in 1890.

By the time 1900 rolled around, there were probably two hundred graves in that cemetery. In 1905, a man named John Skinner sold the land to the Skinner Cemetery Association, passing stewardship from a family name to a community institution. And the last recorded burial was that of Joe Mylo Phipps, an infant, who died in 1928.

An infant at the end. A five-year-old at the beginning. Seventy years of a community, marked at both ends by children who didn't get much time.

The Skinner Cemetery, the marker says, remains a vital link to the early settlers of the Pilot Point community. Two and forty-four hundredths acres. That's all it took to hold all of that.

What the marker says

In the early days of Pilot Point, Lucinda (Glasscock) and Richard Skinner set aside a 2.44-acre piece of land to be used as a cemetery. The first recorded burial was that of 5-year-old Josiah Taylor in March of 1858; his father, Josiah Sr., died the following July. Predominantly of Anglo-Saxon Protestant descent, most of those buried here came from Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Many were farmers or ranchers. Significant graves include that of J. D. Merchant, Sr., a local businessman who built the first brick building in the area. Also here are several victims of yellow fever, including Prissie and Sarah Wilson, sisters who died within 2 months of one another during the epidemic of 1872 and 1873. Two people named James Graham, born on the same date two years apart, died on the same September day in 1867. Lucinda Skinner, the last charter member of the Pilot Point First Baptist Church, died in 1890. By 1900, there were probably 200 graves in the cemetery. The land was sold by John Skinner to the Skinner Cemetery Association in 1905; the last recorded burial was that of Joe Mylo Phipps, an infant who died in 1928. The Skinner Cemetery remains a vital link to the early settlers of the Pilot Point community. (1998) HTC medallion added to post 2012.