Union Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm going on what the official marker says right here in Freestone County. So settle in and let me take you back a ways. Way back to 1860, when a man named Jacob W.

Tacker looked out at a two-acre tract of land and decided it ought to serve the community. He gave that land that year, set aside for two purposes: a cemetery and a school site. The area took on his name, and folks came to know it as the Tacker School and Graveyard Community.

Simple as that, and honest about what it was. A place for the living to learn, and a place for the departed to rest. Six years passed.

Then, in 1866, the first church went up on that land. A log building. Nothing fancy, nothing pretending to be more than it was.

It served as the school too, doing double duty the way things had to out here when resources were scarce and neighbors were everything. Now, the years kept moving, as years tend to do. By 1891, the community raised up a second structure, this one frame, and they gave it a name that said something about what they were reaching for.

They called it Union Church. And at that same moment, the cemetery got a new name to match. Union.

Just Union. There is something quietly powerful in that word, and the marker lets it stand without explaining it. For years after that, local people tended those premises themselves, year after year, neighbors looking after neighbors even after they were gone.

Then in 1900, the Union Cemetery Association was formed, giving that neighborly care a name and a purpose, an organization built to maintain the property and the buildings. And the story did not stop there. In 1962, a brick chapel went up on that same two-acre plot that Jacob W.

Tacker gave back in 1860. Same ground. New walls.

More than a hundred years of people deciding, over and over again, that this particular patch of Freestone County was worth tending.

What the marker says

Used as a burial ground since 1860. This two-acre tract was given in 1860 by Jacob W. Tacker for use as cemetery and school site. Area was known as "Tacker School and Graveyard Community." First church on the land-- a log building-- was erected in 1866. It also served as school. A second, frame structure was built 1891, named "Union Church." At same time the cemetery was renamed "Union." The premises were cared for yearly by local people until the "Union Cemetery Association" was formed in 1900 to maintain property and buildings. Present brick chapel was built in 1962.