Antioch Cemetery and Old Antioch Church of Christ

The plaque gives the Biard family; the Handbook of Texas explains the name. The community was first called Baird, for founder John W. Biard, whose name had been misspelled. The post office opened as Baird in 1880, became Biard later that year, and was Biardstown by 1883. A year later the town was important in cotton shipping, with a gin, two flour mills, a general store, two blacksmith shops, a cobbler and two doctors. The graveyard keeps the family names of that busy market settlement, and burials there continue today.

What the plaque says

Antioch Cemetery and Old Antioch Church of Christ This church and cemetery, dating back to the first years of Texas statehood, were established between 1846 and 1848. The church, First Church of Christ in Lamar County, was founded by Elder Thomas Barrett of Titus County. Instrumental in the organization was the pioneer family of Mrs. Rebecca Stone Biard and her three sons (whose first names were Andrew Jackson, John Gaines, and William Washington) and her daughter (Minerva B. Stephenson). They came to Texas from Alabama and started Biardstown community in 1846. All three brothers became noted landowners. William W. Biard gave his first home, a 20'x20' log cabin, for use as a church. It had seats made of split logs and an old-fashioned "stick and dirt" chimney. At his mother's death in 1848, he also gave land for the cemetery, in which hers was the first grave. Some years later, the last church building was erected. In early years, both it and the first log church housed community schools. Although the church disbanded about 1920 due to declining membership, burials in the cemetery are continued today. As of 1969, graves number about 300, including those of the original members and many descendants of the Biard family. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eiffel Tower — 6.5 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 7.2 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 7.8 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 16 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Biardstown School — 0.8 mi
• Rockford Church and Cemetery — 4.0 mi
• Paris Junior College — 7.4 mi
• Mt. Canaan Baptist Church — 7.5 mi