Shiloh Cemetery

Cushing, TX

In 1839, soon after moving his family from Tennessee, Martin Baysinger received a 640-acre land grant in what became Rusk County and built up a plantation with a grist mill, cotton gin, brick pit, syrup mill, store, and post office. His holdings eventually approached 7,000 acres, and he set aside this small burial ground at the death of his first wife in 1870. A wooden grave house and the markers of enslaved people said to be buried nearby are now gone, leaving graves that record the county's pioneer era.

Mt. Enterprise, TX

Lyles-Sanders Cemetery began in 1860 with the burial of infant Susan Lyles, serving the Lyles and Sanders families before opening by 1899 to neighboring communities such as Iron Mountain, Gould, and Oak Flat. Formally donated for cemetery use in 1923 and enlarged in 1977, it holds veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War beneath vertical stones, obelisks, and a Woodmen of the World monument. It remains an active burial ground and a record of southern Rusk County's pioneers.

Laneville, TX

McCune Cemetery grew out of the Chinquapin community in the pine country of Rusk County, its roots reaching back to pioneer James L. McCune, who came to Texas in David G. Burnet's colony and took a land grant in 1835. His son married a local Cherokee woman, Delila Storm, in 1836, and their third child's 1852 burial opened the family graveyard. More than 200 graves now rest beneath hickories, oaks, and chinquapins on land still held by McCune heirs.

Trawick, TX

This cemetery has served the Linn Flat community since the mid-nineteenth century, its land deeded by John Polk in 1849 with the stipulation that he lie at its center. The earliest burial, unmarked, dates to 1837, while the oldest marked grave belongs to Polk's wife, who died in 1855. The town of Linn Flat, named for its groves of linn trees, thrived until the railroad bypassed it in 1903, but families have kept the burial ground and its annual homecoming reunions alive for more than a century.