Sugar Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

The marker out here in Panola County tells it this way, and I'll do my best to honor it. This is Sugar Hill Cemetery, and like a lot of Texas ground, it holds more stories than it shows on the surface. Let me walk you through what's known, what's believed, and what the stones and the rocks are still quietly saying.

Elijah Wyatt came to Texas in 1838. That's a long way back, deep in the early days of this place. He is thought to have died and been buried right here in 1849.

I say thought, because that's the word the marker uses, and out here we respect the difference between what's known and what's believed. His son-in-law, Terrell Henson, was the one who made things official, or at least more official. In 1855, Henson deeded land to a man named T.

A. Sullivan, but he held something back. One acre, reserved in the deed, set aside for the graveyard and the meeting house.

That reservation in the paperwork tells us something. You don't write a graveyard into a land deed unless folks are already using it. Local belief holds that this ground was already serving as a burial place before the ink was dry on that 1855 deed.

Then comes Thomas C. Jones. He was living on Wyatt family property when he died in 1861, and his is the earliest marked grave here.

Not the earliest burial, mind you. The earliest marked grave. That's a distinction worth sitting with for a moment.

As more and more families were interred here, the place became known as the Sugar Hill Community Cemetery. And here's the part that stops you at the entrance. Three graves sit there at the threshold, and surrounding them are rocks.

Under those rocks, members of the Terrell and Minerva Wyatt Henson family are believed to be buried. No formal markers. Just stones, placed by somebody, for somebody, a long time ago.

The cemetery holds seventy-eight marked graves today, and at least as many that are unmarked. Among them rest veterans of the Civil War and veterans of World War II. Generations of service, generations of loss, all folded into one quiet acre in Panola County.

The rocks at the entrance don't give names. They just hold the ground.

What the marker says

Elijah Wyatt, who came to Texas in 1838, is thought to have died and been buried here in 1849. His son-in-law, Terrell Henson, deeded land to T. A. Sullivan in 1855, reserving one acre for "the graveyard and meeting house," supporting the local belief that the site was already in use as a local burial ground. Thomas C. Jones was living on Wyatt family property when he died in 1861; his is the earliest marked grave. The site became the Sugar Hill Community Cemetery as more families were interred here. Members of the Terrell and Minerva Wyatt Henson family are believed to be buried under the rocks surrounding three graves at the entrance to the cemetery. With 78 marked graves and at least as many unmarked, the graveyard includes the final resting place of veterans of the Civil War and World War II. (1999)