Taylor Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of the official marker for Taylor Cemetery, out in Trinity County. Now settle in, because this one's the kind of story that starts with Georgia soil and ends with a whole community finding its way home to the same patch of East Texas ground. James T.

Durdin was born in 1819, and so was his wife, Sarah Washington Ricks. Georgia natives, the both of them. Somewhere along the line they packed up five children and headed west, and in 1851 they purchased a land grant from a man named Joel Clapp and put down roots right here.

You'd think that was the start of something bright. And it was, partly. But the land had an early grief waiting in it.

Two of their three sons, Washington Bruce and James Francis, died in 1852. Both of them. Buried on the family property, right at this site.

That ground was already sacred before anyone thought to call it a cemetery. When the Durdins sold the property to James E. and Mary E. Taylor in 1857, they did something that tells you everything about what that plot of earth meant to them.

They set it aside. Kept it separate in the deed. Called it, in their own words, Durdin's graveyard.

You don't forget a place where you left your children. James Durdin died in 1859, and he was buried there beside those two sons. The 1860 census finds James and Mary Taylor living on the property with their six children, building a life on land that already held so much.

The first recorded burial of a Taylor family member came in 1873, when James and Mary's granddaughter, Ida Arrenia Merrill, was laid to rest there. James Taylor himself died in 1874, and Mary Taylor lived on until 1912. Both of them are buried here.

The Taylors kept burying their own, year after year, and then around 1890 they opened the graveyard to the wider community. The first person outside the Durdin and Taylor families to be buried here was a Mrs. Joe Barnett, a resident of nearby Pegoda, sometime in the 1890s.

Word traveled, as it does. Citizens of Pegoda and the surrounding area began using the graveyard, and by the 1920s they were the ones maintaining the grounds. By the 1950s, the Taylor Cemetery Association had been formed to carry that work forward.

The property itself stayed in the Taylor family until 1946. What started as one grieving family's act of devotion quietly became the resting place of a whole community. That's not nothing.

That's just about everything.

What the marker says

Georgia natives James T. Durdin (b. 1819) and his wife Sarah Washington Ricks (b. 1819) and their five children settled here on a land grant they purchased from Joel Clapp in 1851. Two of their three sons, Washington Bruce and James Francis, died in 1852 and were buried on their property at this site. In their sale of this property to James E. and Mary E. Taylor in 1857, the Durdins set aside this site which they called the Durdin's graveyard. James Durdin died in 1859 and was buried here beside his two sons. The 1860 census shows James and Mary Taylor living here with their six children. The first recorded burial of a Taylor family member was James' and Mary's granddaughter, Ida Arrenia Merrill, in 1873. James (d. 1874) and Mary Taylor (d. 1912) are buried here. The Taylors continued to bury members of their family here and about 1890 opened the graveyard to community burials. The first person outside of the Durbin and Taylor families buried here was Mrs. Joe Barnett, a resident of nearby Pegoda, in the 1890s. Citizens of Pegoda and the surrounding area used the graveyard and by the 1920s were maintaining its grounds. The Taylor Cemetery Association was formed in the 1950s. The property remained in the Taylor family until 1946.