Baccus Cemetery

The plaque calls Henry Cook's log house a landmark on the Shawnee Trail, and the trail has its own history. The Handbook of Texas says it was the earliest and easternmost of the cattle routes north. Its main stem ran through Austin, Waco and Dallas and crossed the Red River at Rock Bluff, near Preston. Drovers took over a path Indians had long used for hunting and raiding, and southbound settlers from the Midwest called it the Texas Road. Herds went up it from the 1840s.

What the plaque says

Baccus Cemetery Henry Cook (1775-1862), a veteran of the War of 1812, settled here in 1845 as a member of the Peters Colony. His log house, located nearby, was a landmark on the Shawnee Trail. He first used this property as a family cemetery in 1847 for the burial of his son Daniel (b. 1831). His daughter Rachel Cook Baccus deeded the burial ground to his heirs in 1878. She later donated adjoining land for construction of the Baccus Christian Church Sanctuary. The cemetery, named in her honor about 1915, is still in use. The church was disbanded in the 1930s. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 13 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 20 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 20 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 21 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Site of Lebanon — 2.0 mi
• Liberty Baptist Church — 3.6 mi
• The Hedgcoxe War — 3.7 mi
• First Baptist Church, Hebron — 4.3 mi