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Biggerstaff Cemetery

Dodd City, Fannin County, Texas

Marker Inscription

(One-third mile south) The families of Oliver (1812-1872) and Mary (Livingston) Jackson (1818-1890) and George (1823-1906) and Didama (Jackson) Biggerstaff (1835-1902) moved here from Missouri and settled on adjoining farms in 1854. The Jacksons erected a schoolhouse on their property and this cemetery was established on the Biggerstaff farm. The first recorded burial here was that of Grant Clutter in 1864. The cemetery, which contains about 50 burials, served as the graveyard for the Jackson and Biggerstaff families and their descendants. The last recorded burial was that of Russell McCormack in 1935. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

In 1854 the Jackson and Biggerstaff families left Missouri and settled adjoining farms in Fannin County, quickly building the twin institutions of frontier community — a schoolhouse on one farm and a family burial ground on the other. The cemetery's first recorded burial came in 1864, and roughly fifty graves accumulated before the last interment in 1935. It remains the resting place of two pioneer clans and their descendants.

Why it matters

The cemetery preserves the memory of the interlinked pioneer families whose farms, schools, and graveyards knit the North Texas frontier into settled community.

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Related people

  • · George Biggerstaff
  • · Oliver Jackson

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryMemorial

Nearby & related markers

Gober Baptist Church

Gober, TX

On a summer day in 1889, the Rev. S.P. Clement and twelve charter members organized a Baptist congregation in the small Fannin County community of Gober. Early worship happened in the one-room schoolhouse and under a brush arbor before the members raised the town's first church building in 1893 on land donated by the Eads family. Larger sanctuaries followed in 1924 and 1953, and the congregation kept up an active missions program at home and abroad.

Moore's Chapel Cemetery

Bonham, TX

Alexander Moore and his wife Mary Jane brought their family from Missouri to this part of Fannin County in 1857, and in the mid-1870s donated two acres to a growing community for a cemetery, with neighbor Martha Cashion the first recorded burial in 1876. A Baptist sanctuary rose just to the north on land the Moores also gave, and church, school, and graveyard together became the community center known as Moore's Chapel. A grim cluster of infant graves from the 1880s and 1890s records a typhoid outbreak, while veterans from the Civil War through World War II rest among the pioneer families still tended by a cemetery association.

Portland

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Confederate veteran Jesse Green London brought his family to this spot in 1873, and other families followed to build a small farming settlement with a blacksmith, a wood shop, a school, and a store that doubled as post office. A Congregational Methodist church took shape by the century's end, worshiping in the old log schoolhouse until a sanctuary was built in 1909. When the rail line was laid to the south, Portland's chance to grow slipped away, leaving little today but a few homes and the church.

Arledge Ridge Cemetery

Bonham, TX

Brothers Joseph and William Arledge arrived from Alabama in the 1850s and built successful farms that gave rise to the Arledge Ridge settlement. Joseph ran one of Fannin County's earliest freight lines to the port of Jefferson, while William established a cotton gin and donated land for a school, church, and, in 1876, this community burial ground. Its graves include early settlers and Civil War veterans, and a cemetery association has cared for the site since 1948.