Wilkinson Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker's the source here, and here's how I tell it. Out in Marion County, there's a piece of ground that's been holdin' secrets since before the Civil War. They call it Wilkinson Cemetery, and it carries that name from a couple named Seaborn Jones Wilkinson and his wife, Elizabeth Ann.

This was the family burial ground for residents of the Old Wilkinson Plantation, and if you stop and walk it slow, the names carved into that earth will tell you something about the people who shaped this corner of East Texas. The earliest burial on record dates to 1854. An infant daughter.

The child of Abner Pulaski Moseley and his wife, Louisiana, born a McCaa. Abner would go on to serve as a Confederate veteran, but in 1854 he was just a father, and that cemetery received his baby girl. Now, that is where the story starts, and cemeteries being what they are, it does not stop there.

William Hilary Moseley rests there too, a Confederate veteran and a minister both, a man who apparently answered to more than one kind of calling. And then there's Samuel Fountain Moseley, who married Eliza Irby Wilkinson, tying the Moseley name right back to the Wilkinson name on the gate. S.F.

Moseley had range. He was a veteran of the U.S.-Mexico War, a successful lawyer, and the owner of a newspaper called the Jefferson Herald. A man who fought, argued, and published his way through life.

The cemetery held them all, generation by generation, and for a long while it held them quietly. Then in 1994, the Wilkinson Cemetery Association formed, specifically to maintain this historic burial ground. Some stories need a keeper.

Turns out, this one found several.

What the marker says

This family burial ground served residents of the Old Wilkinson Plantation. The cemetery is named for Seaborn Jones Wilkinson and his wife, Elizabeth Ann. The earliest burial here, dating to 1854, is of an infant daughter of Confederate veteran Abner Pulaski Moseley and his wife, Louisiana (McCaa). Also among the interred are confederate veteran and minister, William Hilary Moseley, and Samuel Fountain Moseley, the husband of Eliza Irby (Wilkinson). S.F. Moseley was a U.S.-Mexico War veteran, successful lawyer and owner of a newspaper, the Jefferson Herald. In 1994, the Wilkinson Cemetery association formed to maintain this historic burial ground.