Feagin Cemetery
Livingston, Polk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Aaron (1811-1863) and Sarah (Merrill) (1824-1869) Feagin came from Alabama to the Bear Creek community in 1857. The Feagins paid $10,000 in gold for 2,820 acres of land and built a house and store. Their daughter Susannah and her husband John A. Handley operated a store in nearby Moscow; John Handley served in the Civil War. In 1868 the Handley family moved to Bear Creek to help the widowed Sarah raise the younger Feagin Children. John A. Handley, who had been postmaster in Moscow, applied for a Bear Creek Post Office in 1891 and the town was renamed for his youngest daughter, Hortense. In 1905 the Handleys deeded two acres of the Feagin land, including the burial plots of Aaron and Sarah, for a public cemetery. Their son Jesse and his wife Ada (Rice) Handley added 1.5 more acres to expand the cemetery in 1926. Veterans of several major American and international conflicts are interred here, as are many early Bear Creek and Hortense families. A 1997 count revealed more than 200 marked graves in Feagin Cemetery. Many more are unmarked; most of these are likely to be those of infants. Five graves, those of the five children of Jessie E. Parrish, bear witness to the difficulties of pioneer life. Feagin Cemetery continues to serve the Hortense community. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1857 Aaron and Sarah Feagin left Alabama for the Bear Creek community of the East Texas Piney Woods, paying $10,000 in gold for nearly 2,820 acres to build a home and store. Their descendants, the Handley family, carried on the settlement — securing a post office in 1891 that renamed the town Hortense for a young daughter, and deeding two acres of Feagin land for a public cemetery in 1905. The grounds hold more than 200 marked graves alongside many unmarked ones, most believed to be infants, a quiet record of how costly pioneer life could be.
Why it matters
Family burial grounds like this trace the everyday settlement of frontier Texas, where a single family's land, store, and cemetery became the seed of a whole rural community.
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Related people
- · Aaron Feagin
- · Sarah Merrill Feagin
- · John A. Handley
- · Susannah Feagin Handley
Related events
- · Founding of Hortense, Texas
Themes & tags
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