Burns Cemetery

When William Boyd Burns gave this land in 1876, Trenton did not exist. The Handbook of Texas says settlers came by wagon train from Tennessee in 1852 to a country called Wild Cat Thicket for its wildcats. A Leonard history by Tom Hymer describes the region's thicket as briars and thorn vines so dense that a person could hardly see into it by day, a haven for outlaws and fugitives and the scene of several killings in the Lee-Peacock feud, 1865 to 1872. Trenton's post office opened in 1881.

What the plaque says

Burns Cemetery Land for this cemetery was donated in 1876 by Tennessee native William Boyd Burns (1821-1907), whose log cabin home was located adjacent to the site. Pioneer settler of the Trenton community, he also gave nearby property for a Union church building, Burns Chapel, which served as an early schoolhouse for the surrounding rural area. The cemetery was first used in 1877 for the burials of Burns' stepson John Patton and daughter Priscilla Burns, who at 16 was a teacher in the Orangeville Academy. Other graves include those of pioneer area settlers and prominent leaders of Trenton. Among the Civil War veterans interred here and early physician Dr. W. C. Holmes, who fought at Shiloh, and John w. Connelly, a former teacher in the Indian Territory who became a popular local preacher. For well over a century the Burns Cemetery has served residents of the Trenton area. The original tract has been enlarged through a donation of land and the purchase of additional property. Still in use, the cemetery serves as a historic reminder of the region's rich heritage and as the site of an annual memorial service honoring the settlers who led in the area's development. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 25 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 25 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Trenton — 1.0 mi
• First Methodist Church of Trenton — 1.0 mi
• First National Bank of Trenton — 1.1 mi
• Valley Creek — 4.2 mi