Pendergrass Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, Comanche County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pioneer farmer and rancher William Pendergrass (1818-98) and his wife, Emaline (1819-1907), moved from Tennessee to Smith County, Texas, in 1849. They first came to Comanche County in 1859, then settled here permanently after a brief return to Smith County (1866-73). Some of the Pendergrasses' nine children also settled in this area. A leader in this frontier community, Pendergrass helped to establish several churches and a school, as well as this cemetery. The first interment here was in 1883, when Pendergrass offered a plot of his land for the burial of a stranger whose body was found nearby. Soon afterward, he moved graves of two of his grandchildren, Hilliard Pendergrass and Pearly Cook, to this site from a tract of land he had sold. In 1888 he deeded the one-acre cemetery to the community. Emaline Pendergrass donated another acre shortly after her husband's death in 1898. The 525 graves now (1975) here include those of Pendergrass, his wife, and many of their descendants. The Pendergrass Cemetery Association, formed as the result of a community beautification drive, fenced the site and erected gates in 1959. The well-maintained cemetery is still used for burials. (1975)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
William and Emaline Pendergrass left Tennessee for Texas in 1849 and put down permanent roots in frontier Comanche County by 1873. A community builder, William helped found churches and a school, and in 1883 gave a plot of his land to bury a stranger found nearby—the first grave in what became the family cemetery. He deeded the acre to the community in 1888, and generations of descendants now rest among its more than five hundred graves.
Why it matters
Pioneer burial grounds like this map the quiet human geography of frontier settlement, where a single family's generosity anchored a whole community's shared memory.
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Related people
- · William Pendergrass
- · Emaline Pendergrass
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cox Cemetery
Sidney vicinity, TX
William Driscol Cox brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and settled a 300-acre ranch here, teaching the first school in nearby Sidney and serving as Comanche County sheriff. The cemetery began with the 1876 burial of his infant daughter Mary Jane, and in 1886 Cox donated the ground to a Methodist mission as a public burial place. Generations of the Cox family and their kin have tended it ever since.
Community of Sidney
Sidney, TX
Sidney took shape around 1870 when early settlers located along Jimmie's Creek, building a log schoolhouse by a spring in 1877 that also hosted the town's Methodist, Baptist, and Church of Christ congregations in turn. A store, post office (named for a storekeeper's son), and Holstein dairy herds followed, and by the early 1900s the town had doctors, drug stores, and a telephone exchange. It also basked in the fame of nearby Round Mountain, the first field laboratory of world-renowned geologist Dr. Robert T. Hill.
Bibb Community
Sidney, TX
Bibb sprang up when Anglo cotton farmers settled western Comanche County in the 1870s, and by 1891 seven men platted a proper town of 44 lots. At its height in the 1890s it bustled with cotton gins, general stores, a school, four churches, a broom factory, and Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges. As roads improved and rail bypassed it, the population drained away; today no trace of Bibb remains on the ground.
Taylor's Chapel Congregational Methodist Church
Comanche, TX
In 1901 a Methodist circuit preacher gathered area families under a brush arbor near Soda Springs, and the next year Hood Taylor deeded land that gave the congregation its name. For generations the church anchored a scattered rural community, often worshipping outdoors under arbors and tabernacles even after its first sanctuary rose in 1902. A handful of long-serving pastors, two of them together spanning more than thirty years, carried it into its second century.