Smith Bend-Coon Creek Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker at Smith Bend-Coon Creek Cemetery tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Now, some families just pass through a place. And then there are families like the Smiths, who show up, put down roots so deep you can still find them in the ground, literally.

John Jackson Smith was born in 1799, and his wife Margaret in 1802. They came from Mississippi, made the long journey, and arrived here in the Texas hills of Bosque County sometime in the 1850s. And when they got here, they didn't just settle.

They founded something. A whole community, Smith Bend, bearing their name. But communities aren't just built on ambition and hard work.

Sometimes they're built on grief. John and Margaret had a son, Burton, born in 1832. Burton died in 1856.

He was young, and his loss was the kind that changes a family forever. In the wake of that loss, John and Margaret Smith gave something. They gave land.

Land for a cemetery, right here, so that Burton would have a place, and so that the community they were building would have a place to remember its own. That is a particular kind of generosity. The kind that comes wrapped in sorrow.

The Smiths also had a daughter, Ann. Ann married a man named Silas McCabe, and together those two started their own settlement nearby, called Coon Creek. Two communities, growing up side by side, both carrying the roots of that Mississippi family who arrived in the 1850s with everything they had.

Margaret Smith outlived her husband by many years. John passed in 1867. Margaret lived on until 1881.

And all that time, and long after, this cemetery kept growing. Later land donations enlarged the site, and today it holds over five hundred graves. Five hundred stories, five hundred names, all anchored to the ground that John and Margaret gave.

Residents of Smith Bend and Coon Creek, their descendants, and friends have helped maintain this burial ground across the generations. And the marker itself was sponsored by Mmes. Marshall V.

Bonds, Lois Smith Hill, and Camille Smith Womack, names that carry the echo of the family that started it all. Some legacies are written in courthouses and history books. This one is written in five hundred graves on land given by two people who had just buried their boy.

That, folks, is how a family becomes a place.

What the marker says

John Jackson Smith (1799-1867) and his wife Margaret (1802-1881) migrated here from Mississippi in the 1850's and founded Smith Bend community. They gave land for this cemetery after the death of their son Burton (1832-1856). The Smith's daughter Ann and her husband Silas McCabe started the nearby settlement of Coon Creek. Residents of the two communities, descendants, and friends help maintain the burial ground. Enlarged by later land donations, the site contains over 500 graves. (1978) Incise on back: Marker Sponsors: Mmes. Marshall V. Bonds, Lois Smith Hill, Camille Smith Womack