DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Taylor Family Cemetery in Denton County. Now, every family has its stories. Some get written down, some get carved in stone, and some — well, some just refuse to die.
The Taylor family of Sand Town? They've got all three. Samuel L.
Taylor was born in 1806, and his wife Martha in 1811. Together they raised sons Benjamin, born in 1836, Richard in 1842, and Moses in 1846. In 1859, this whole family packed up their lives in North Carolina and pointed themselves at Texas.
They weren't making that journey alone, either. Traveling with them were three enslaved people — Kijeah, Matilda, and James — and a pair of friends, William and Beulah Lunn, born in 1803 and 1810, along with their son E.S., born in 1848. That is a considerable company of souls, all of them bound for a stretch of Denton County country that people around here called Sand Town.
And they put down roots. The Taylors prospered — as farmers and as livestock breeders — and in time they became some of the earliest settlers of what we now call the Little Elm area. That kind of permanence earns you a marker.
But permanence isn't what makes the story stick. No, what makes people lean in around the campfire is the tale of a race mare. A horse sold by Moses Taylor — to a man named Sam Bass.
An outlaw. The marker doesn't spell out exactly how that transaction went down, just that the tale is still told. Still told.
That means it has been surviving on its own merits for a long time, passed from one mouth to the next, wearing nothing but the plain weight of being too good to forget. Moses himself was born in 1846 and died in 1875 — the same year his mother Martha passed. Samuel followed two years later, in 1877.
Beulah Lunn had gone in 1870, and young E.S. Lunn in 1874. William Lunn held on until 1883.
Benjamin Taylor lived to 1908. Richard, the longest-lived of the brothers, was born in 1842 and died in 1922. The stones that remain in that cemetery tell those spans plainly, marking lives that stretched from the antebellum South all the way into the twentieth century.
Not every grave is marked, the inscription reminds us. Some of these pioneers rest without a stone above them — which means the ground out there holds more history than we can fully read. But what the remaining markers do tell, they tell honestly: who came, who stayed, who farmed the land, who bred the livestock, and who once sold a horse to a man whose name is still spoken with a certain low, knowing tone.
Sand Town is quiet now. But the Taylor Family Cemetery keeps its records, one stone at a time.
What the marker says
Samuel L. (1806-1877) and Martha (1811-1875) Taylor, their sons Moses (1846-1875), Richard (1842-1922) and Benjamin (1836-1908), with his family, were among the earliest settlers in this area known as Sand Town. They arrived here from North Carolina in 1859 with slaves Kijeah, Matilda and James, and accompanied by friends William (1803-1883) and Beulah (1810-1870) Lunn and son, E.S. (1848-1874). The Taylors prospered as farmers and livestock breeders; the tale is still told of the "race mare" sold by Moses to outlaw Sam Bass. Not all graves are marked, but the remaining stones chronicle the lives of these pioneers of the Little Elm area. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001