Union Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane tells it back to you. Way out in Henderson County, there's a stretch of ground that's been holding onto this community's memory for well over a hundred years now. And it all starts, as so many Texas stories do, with one man and a piece of land.

By 1860, a fellow named David Thompson had acquired land in this vicinity, sitting right on the original Hezekiah Mitcham land survey. That's two names worth remembering, because without either one of them, none of what follows happens. Thompson didn't just sit on that land.

He put it to work. He established a grist mill and a cotton gin, both of them running along Wildcat Creek. Now you think about what that meant for folks scattered across that part of Henderson County.

You needed your grain ground, you needed your cotton ginned, you came to Thompson's Mill. That's what they called the community, Thompson's Mill, or sometimes just Wildcat, after the creek. It was the kind of place that wasn't so much a town as it was a gathering.

Then Thompson's sons carried things a step further. They conveyed land right at this site for Union Church and School purposes. A church.

A school. On the same ground. That's a community planting its flag, saying, we are here, and we intend to stay.

By 1885, the date of the earliest marked grave, local residents had begun using the land adjacent to that church for burial. The church was beside them in life, and now it would stand beside them in death too. But here's where the story takes that quiet, bittersweet turn that Texas history is full of.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, the church closed. The school closed. The post office for the Wildcat, or Thompson's Mill, community closed right along with them.

The dispersed community that had built all of this slowly came apart at the seams, the way small communities sometimes do. And yet. The burial ground didn't close.

Area residents kept coming. They kept laying their people to rest in this same soil, beside the same neighbors their grandparents had known. The Union Cemetery is maintained by a cemetery association to this day.

The mill is gone. The school is gone. The church is gone.

But the ground remembers, and somebody's still tending it.

What the marker says

By 1860, David Thompson acquired land in this vicinity on the original Hezekiah Mitcham land survey. He established a grist mill and cotton gin on Wildcat Creek. Thompson's sons conveyed land at this site for Union Church and School purposes. By 1885, the date of the earliest marked grave, local residents used the land adjacent to the church for burial. The church, school and post office for the dispersed Wildcat, or Thompson's Mill, community closed near the turn of the 20th century, but area residents continued using the burial ground, which is now maintained by a cemetery association. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004