Huson Cemetery

Fences divide the ground in three, and Joy Gough's survey says why. The northern section is Black burials, the middle section is white and carries the marker, and the southern section is Black and still in use. A local history says Huson holds the majority of the Black people who lived around Farmersville, including some born into slavery. Allen Daniel's 1852 burial was the first. In 1916 the Farmersville Citizen reported that one of the people he had enslaved, Ben Daniel, was still living, remembered the early days and was highly respected. Gough found no deed and no association.

What the plaque says

Huson Cemetery Allen Daniel and his family came to Texas from Tennessee in 1847. He and his wife Elizabeth were the parents of eight children. They settled in this area in 1850 and Daniel purchased 480 acres of land in May 1851. Less than one year later, on February 25, 1852, he died and was buried on his land. Allen and Elizabeth Daniel's daughter, Tennessee P. Daniel, was married to D.E. Huson. Tennessee Huson bought the family land from her mother in 1875, and it was during her ownership that the property surrounding her father's grave was given to the community as a public cemetery. It gradually became known as Huson Cemetery. Those interred in this historic graveyard include many pioneers of the area, including the Daniel, Huson, Wilcoxson, and Redwine families. John Hendrex and William Piunckney Chapman, who are credited with naming the town of Farmersville, and William Gotcher, who donated land for the town square, are buried here along with members of their families. Also interred here are many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families. The cemetery contains hundreds of marked and unmarked graves. (1989)

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.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 17 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Farmersville — 1.0 mi
• First National Bank of Farmersville — 1.4 mi
• Audie Murphy's Homecoming, June 15, 1945 — 1.4 mi
• First Methodist Church of Farmersville — 1.5 mi