Taylor Cemetery

Marion De Kalb Taylor, whose land held the cemetery, was a physician and legislator. Born in Georgia in 1818, he lost his Alabama legislative seat in 1844 for backing the annexation of Texas and moved to Cass County, now Marion, in 1847. He served in the Texas House and Senate, was Speaker twice and helped direct the Jefferson armory. The Handbook says he died after a fall in 1897 and was buried in the Taylor family cemetery near Jefferson, and records a family source that he fathered several Black children, one educated at an eastern school.

What the plaque says

Taylor Cemetery Ward Taylor, Sr. (1791-1871), and Nancy (Mathews) Taylor (1796-1879) came to Texas from Alabama in 1845. Several Taylor and Mathews relatives and children joined them in Marion County in that year and the years following, building homes and helping to settle the area. In May 1860, four-month-old Emmett, son of E. W. and S. E Taylor, was buried on this site on land belonging to Marion De Kalb (M.D.K.) Taylor. Emmett's grave remains the earliest marked burial in the cemetery, though family history indicates that the graveyard was in use before the Civil War. According to legend, the family buried several slaves outside the original fence to the north of the main cemetery. When M.D.K. deeded the land to his father, Ward Taylor, Sr., in 1868, the family cemetery was mentioned in the deed. Ward's wife Nancy inherited the property upon his death. She left the property, according to Ward's instructions, to their son J.M. Taylor, who willed it to his wife Amanda Maleson (Craven) Taylor. In 1961, a cemetery association was formed to care for the graveyard. Association members identified sixteen of those who are believed to have been buried in 32 unmarked graves. In 1998, there were 32 marked burials in Taylor Cemetery. The graveyard continues to serve Taylor descendants and all others who wish to be buried here. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Excelsior House Hotel — 6.5 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 6.6 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 10 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Jefferson — 5.4 mi
• Richard Waterhouse — 6.3 mi
• John M. Vines — 6.3 mi
• Whittaker Memorial Cemetery — 6.4 mi