Four Sabine County, Texas, cemeteries

The Mt. Sinai Cemetery is a relatively old cemetery, with its first interment dating back to 1894, and is located in the community of Fairmount close to the Beechwood subdivision on the Toledo Bend reservoir.  The cemetery does include graves with older markers; these are reinterments necessitated when three local cemeteries located closer to the Sabine River were inundated following construction of the Toledo Bend dam in the mid-1960s.   The cemetery includes a number of interesting markers, as well as this poignant tableau:  

The swing faces this marker:

One can only assume that Gerald's parents spent quite a few hours in the swing while visiting with their deceased son. 

Mt. Sinai also includes this amazing stainless steel marker:

The photos don't do it justice.

 The Fairmount Cemetery is located on Texas Highway 87.

Like the Mt. Sinai Cemetery, it is relatively old and has a Texas Historical Commission book on a stick providing a brief history:

I was actually more intrigued by the sign instructing people not to bury pets in the cemetery (enlarge the first photo to see; it's the smaller sign on the fence) -- is that a common problem?  Most markers in the cemetery were standard, 20th century commercial stones, although there were a few graves marked only with fieldstones:

There was also one vernacular marker that was a little unusual in having a replacement gravestone placed adjacent to it.  Usually the vernacular stones are discarded when a commercial stone replaces them.

 The Ener Cemetery near Yellowpine is a traditional pioneer family cemetery. 

A few of the older stones have weathered to the point of being difficult to read, but most are still quite legible, and are standard commercial markers.

The Yellowpine Cemetery is a relatively new community cemetery.  Like the other three, it is well maintained.

I'm always intrigued when cemeteries located close to each other geographically exhibit different customs or practices, and Yellowpine does have a few characteristics not seen at Mt. Sinai or Fairmount.  Putting an edging around the family plot and keeping it neat with sand or crushed white rock is a popular practice:

This plot with its carefully raked sand is reminiscent of a Zen garden:

I was also quite frankly stunned by this:

I'm hoping this has some meaning for the family that isn't obvious to an outsider, because "Ho! Ho! Ho!" feels like a rather odd sentiment to place on a grave.

Clark-Dickey-Smith cemeteries, Sabine County, Texas

This is an odd site in Sabine County, Texas:  two cemeteries located literally spitting distance from each other.  In urban terms, they're less than half a standard city block apart.  No other traces of a community remain so it's difficult to say how they were located historically, e.g., were they once separated by a road?  As the book-on-a-stick notes, at one time a settlement existed that included several families.  I'm told there was also a cane mill, but no evidence of that settlement other than the cemeteries exists today. 

The Clark-Dickey cemetery is larger and, at a guess, appears to have been used for a longer time.  There are a number of fieldstone markers in addition to the commercial stones.  The cast concrete markers with hand lettering appear to be fairly recent, and may have been added at about the same time the historical marker was planted.

The Clark-Dickey cemetery includes half a dozen or so of the vernacular cast concrete tablet style markers like the one shown below; none were made using lettering kits.

Both cemeteries are surrounded by chain-link fence that's fairly new and in generally good condition, although a tree had fallen recently (within the past year) on the fencing for the Smith cemetery. 

The photo above is from the Smith Cemetery; it's the most noticeable grave there.  No inscription was visible on the tablet. 

The book-on-a-stick erected by the Texas Historical Commission suggests that both cemeteries began as family cemeteries, but notes a connection between the two, making it even odder that they're physically separate.  Local sources suggested that the fencing is wrong, the two cemeteries were connected, and more graves exist than are currently known or marked.  Whether or not that's true would require a thorough archeological survey, including the use of ground penetrating radar, a highly unlikely scenario given that both cemeteries appear to fall within the Sandy Creek riparian zone and are thus unlikely to be impacted by any future logging operations on that portion of the Forest. 

Both cemeteries are located on the Sabine National Forest.