Skinner Cemetery
Pilot Point, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the early days of Pilot Point, Lucinda (Glasscock) and Richard Skinner set aside a 2.44-acre piece of land to be used as a cemetery. The first recorded burial was that of 5-year-old Josiah Taylor in March of 1858; his father, Josiah Sr., died the following July. Predominantly of Anglo-Saxon Protestant descent, most of those buried here came from Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Many were farmers or ranchers. Significant graves include that of J. D. Merchant, Sr., a local businessman who built the first brick building in the area. Also here are several victims of yellow fever, including Prissie and Sarah Wilson, sisters who died within 2 months of one another during the epidemic of 1872 and 1873. Two people named James Graham, born on the same date two years apart, died on the same September day in 1867. Lucinda Skinner, the last charter member of the Pilot Point First Baptist Church, died in 1890. By 1900, there were probably 200 graves in the cemetery. The land was sold by John Skinner to the Skinner Cemetery Association in 1905; the last recorded burial was that of Joe Mylo Phipps, an infant who died in 1928. The Skinner Cemetery remains a vital link to the early settlers of the Pilot Point community. (1998) HTC medallion added to post 2012.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In Pilot Point's early days, Lucinda and Richard Skinner set aside two and a half acres for a cemetery, and the first recorded burial—five-year-old Josiah Taylor—came in 1858. Most of those laid to rest were Protestant families from Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee who had followed the frontier westward to farm and ranch. The stones record the hazards of the age, including sisters lost to the yellow fever epidemic of 1872–73, and by 1900 the ground held perhaps 200 graves.
Why it matters
Skinner Cemetery is a quiet archive of the Upper South migrants who settled North Texas and the epidemics that shadowed frontier life.
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Related people
- · Lucinda Skinner
- · Richard Skinner
- · J. D. Merchant, Sr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pilot Point Church of Christ
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This congregation formed around 1865, two decades after families of the Peters Colony began homesteading the Pilot Point area of Denton County. In 1874 the deacons bought this ground, and the next year raised a one-room frame chapel under builder A. W. Cooke, expanding it as membership grew. Long a fixture of local life, the church helped organize a sister congregation in nearby Aubrey in 1959.
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