King-Williams Cemetery
Kosse, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bardin King (1819-1891) and Elizabeth Susan Salter (1822-1879) married in Lowndes County, Alabama in 1842. The following year, they traveled west by wagon with their young son William and Susan's parents and siblings, settling in Louisiana. Bardin was successful growing cotton, but in the late 1850s the extended family moved to Texas, settling first in Navarro and Washington counties before arriving in Limestone County in 1870. The Kings bought 189 acres here from John and Lucinda Wilson, and the family raised cotton and grains, and were active in the Headsville community. Bardin King was a lay minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church (1 mi. S), and sons John, Cullen and Moses also served later in the same capacity, while youngest son Finley became an ordained Baptist minister. Bardin was a charter member of the local Masonic lodge and active in the Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange. Susan King died in March 1879 and the family buried her here on the farm. The surrounding land became a dedicated cemetery in 1881, when Bardin divided his holdings among his nine living children and set aside one acre for a graveyard. Daughter Susan Leuticia married Robert Holden Williams, and they and their children later continued cotton and corn farming on the family land. Ten members of the King and Williams families were buried in what became known as King Williams Memorial Cemetery and then King-Williams Cemetery. Robert H. Williams died in 1944 and was the last to be buried in the graveyard, which features historic limestone headstones shaded by pine and cedar trees. Family tradition holds an African American freedman named Speight is also buried here in an unmarked grave. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bardin and Elizabeth Susan King married in Alabama in 1842 and spent decades pushing west by wagon—through Louisiana, then across several Texas counties—before settling on 189 acres in Limestone County in 1870 to raise cotton and grain. Deeply woven into the Headsville community, Bardin preached as a Baptist lay minister and joined the Grange and Masons. When Susan died in 1879 she was buried on the farm, and in 1881 Bardin set aside an acre as a family graveyard; family tradition holds that an African American freedman named Speight also rests here in an unmarked grave.
Why it matters
This family cemetery preserves the arc of a Deep South planter family's generation-long migration into Texas and the intertwined, often unmarked, lives of the freed people who shared their land.
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Related people
- · Bardin King
- · Elizabeth Susan Salter King
- · Robert Holden Williams
Themes & tags
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