Historical Marker
Taylor Cemetery
Trinity County · Texas
Erected 1994
The Trinity County Historical Commission's survey of Taylor Cemetery, made in September 2003, records J. E. Taylor, who lived from November 11, 1822, to January 5, 1874, as the man who set the property aside for a community burying ground. It lists James T. Durdin, 1819 to 1859, as presumed buried in an unmarked grave, and Washington Bruce Durdin, 1845 to 1852. The survey also notes that a deed from Southland Paper to the Greater Houston Y.M.C.A. mentions one acre as the Taylor Cemetery.
What the plaque says
Taylor Cemetery Georgia natives James T. Durdin (b. 1819) and his wife Sarah Washington Ricks (b. 1819) and their five children settled here on a land grant they purchased from Joel Clapp in 1851. Two of their three sons, Washington Bruce and James Francis, died in 1852 and were buried on their property at this site. In their sale of this property to James E. and Mary E. Taylor in 1857, the Durdins set aside this site which they called the Durdin's graveyard. James Durdin died in 1859 and was buried here beside his two sons. The 1860 census shows James and Mary Taylor living here with their six children. The first recorded burial of a Taylor family member was James' and Mary's granddaughter, Ida Arrenia Merrill, in 1873. James (d. 1874) and Mary Taylor (d. 1912) are buried here. The Taylors continued to bury members of their family here and about 1890 opened the graveyard to community burials. The first person outside of the Durbin and Taylor families buried here was Mrs. Joe Barnett, a resident of nearby Pegoda, in the 1890s. Citizens of Pegoda and the surrounding area used the graveyard and by the 1920s were maintaining its grounds. The Taylor Cemetery Association was formed in the 1950s. The property remained in the Taylor family until 1946. (1994)
Where it stands
30.91205, -95.30262 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Sam Houston Memorial Museum — 20 miA 15-acre Huntsville campus with Sam Houston's Woodland Home and the Steamboat House where he died in 1863, a museum, an education center gallery and free grounds open dawn to dusk.
- Texas Prison Museum — 20 miA Huntsville museum on the history of the Texas prison system, where the electric chair Old Sparky, used for 361 executions from 1924 to 1964, is shown beside the rodeo and the escapes.
- Huntsville State Park — 24 miA Walker County pine-forest park on Lake Raven, built from 1937 by a Civilian Conservation Corps company of African American veterans, with 21 miles of trails and 160 campsites.