Black Jack Cemetery
Murchison, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground has served this area of eastern Henderson county since the mid-1800s, when the Black Jack community was established. Cradled between the towns of Brownsboro and Murchison, Black Jack became a desirable place to settle due to the area’s rich soil, and abundance of water and timber. By the 1870s, community members organized a church. The church building was also used as a schoolhouse. William A. Burns (1819-1880), an area settler, donated land for church and a cemetery, which was already in use. The earliest dated burial is of Susan Adelaide Page, who died in 1869. She was the wife of Holly Page, a noted community and church leader. Among those interred here are pioneers and leaders of the Black Jack community, including confederate veteran, property owner and school trustee W.A. Smith (1844-1926); William F. (1837-1875) and temperance hatton (1833-1899); and William’s brother, confederate veteran James M. Hatton (1835-1877). Other burials include farmers, teachers, veterans of conflicts and other vital members of the Black Jack community. Features in this cemetery include grave slabs, woodmen of the world gravestones, vertical stones, interior fencing and curbing. Today, descendants of the interred continue to care for this burial ground. The cemetery continues to serve the area and remains as a record of the pioneers of the Black Jack community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers were drawn to the Black Jack community of eastern Henderson County by its rich soil, water, and timber beginning in the mid-1800s, and this burial ground has served the area ever since. Pioneer William A. Burns donated land for a church, school, and the cemetery already in use, whose earliest dated grave belongs to Susan Adelaide Page in 1869. Farmers, teachers, Confederate veterans, and community leaders lie here beneath grave slabs, Woodmen of the World markers, and iron fencing still tended by their descendants.
Why it matters
A pioneer cemetery like Black Jack is a physical record of how ordinary families built and sustained a rural community across generations of the American South.
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Related people
- · William A. Burns
- · Susan Adelaide Page
- · James M. Hatton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Leagueville Cemetery
Murchison, TX
The Leagueville community grew from the Aaron York survey, and tradition holds its cemetery began beside an early schoolhouse on land donated by B.T. and Annie Roberts. That pioneer schoolhouse also hosted worship, and in 1880 the congregation that became Leagueville Baptist Church organized there. The oldest marked grave, that of Alabama native Jacob Colvin, dates to 1863, and pioneer families like the Reagans, Adairs, and Colvins rest among many unmarked early burials.
Athens Lodge No. 165 A.F. & A.M.
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Chartered in 1854, Athens Lodge No. 165 was the first Masonic lodge in Henderson County, founded just a few years after the town of Athens itself. Its members first met above a store on the public square and grew from eleven master masons to more than fifty within two years, obtaining a formal charter in 1856. Over generations the lodge helped seed new lodges in surrounding communities and drew its members from the county's leaders in business, law, education, and public service.
Henderson County Courthouse
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When the Texas Legislature carved out Henderson County in 1846, its government met in private homes and scattered settlements before Athens became the county seat in 1850. A log courthouse gave way to a frame building that burned in 1885, and after another structure was outgrown, the county raised this Classical Revival courthouse, accepted in 1914. With its central dome, Tuscan-columned entries, and marble stairways, it has anchored the town square as the setting for civic life and the famous "Old Fiddlers" contest ever since.
Tidmore Cemetery
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Pioneer L. H. Hobbs settled this part of Van Zandt County around 1850 and let a grieving family bury their two-year-old daughter on his land, quietly founding a cemetery. The graveyard took the Tidmore name after John Tidmore—who died in 1866 of afflictions carried home from the Civil War—and his family came to own the ground and were laid to rest there in turn. Around the Tidmore and Hobbs graves gathered generations of a farming community, including a dozen Confederate veterans and later soldiers of both World Wars.