Taylor Cemetery
Jefferson, Marion County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ward Taylor, Sr. (1791-1871), and Nancy (Mathews) Taylor (1796-1879) came to Texas from Alabama in 1845. Several Taylor and Mathews relatives and children joined them in Marion County in that year and the years following, building homes and helping to settle the area. In May 1860, four-month-old Emmett, son of E. W. and S. E Taylor, was buried on this site on land belonging to Marion De Kalb (M.D.K.) Taylor. Emmett's grave remains the earliest marked burial in the cemetery, though family history indicates that the graveyard was in use before the Civil War. According to legend, the family buried several slaves outside the original fence to the north of the main cemetery. When M.D.K. deeded the land to his father, Ward Taylor, Sr., in 1868, the family cemetery was mentioned in the deed. Ward's wife Nancy inherited the property upon his death. She left the property, according to Ward's instructions, to their son J.M. Taylor, who willed it to his wife Amanda Maleson (Craven) Taylor. In 1961, a cemetery association was formed to care for the graveyard. Association members identified sixteen of those who are believed to have been buried in 32 unmarked graves. In 1998, there were 32 marked burials in Taylor Cemetery. The graveyard continues to serve Taylor descendants and all others who wish to be buried here. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ward Taylor Sr. and Nancy Mathews Taylor came from Alabama to Marion County in 1845, joined by relatives who helped settle the area. The first burial, in May 1860, was four-month-old Emmett Taylor, though family history says the ground was already in use, and legend holds that several enslaved people were buried just outside the fence to the north. The land passed down through the Taylor family, and a cemetery association formed in 1961 to care for its marked and unmarked graves.
Why it matters
With its family plots and the enslaved buried just beyond the fence line, the cemetery quietly records both the settlement of antebellum Texas and the divisions of the society that built it.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Ward and Nancy Taylor came to Texas in 1845 — the very year Texas left its brief life as an independent republic and joined the United States. It was a moment of enormous movement, as families from the older Southern states poured into the new frontier looking for land and a fresh start. The Taylors, arriving from Alabama, were part of that great migration.
Marion County lay in the northeast corner of the state, in a region of bayous and forests that connected the interior to the wider world of Southern cotton and commerce. Settlers like the Taylors, joined by relatives named Mathews and by their children, spread across the county building homes and, in the process, laying the foundations of permanent communities.
The fifteen years that followed were the last of the antebellum era. By the time the cemetery recorded its first marked burial in 1860, the country stood on the brink of civil war — and this ground had already begun quietly gathering the settlers, and the enslaved people bound to them, who shaped these first decades of Texas life.
People & events
At the center of the story are Ward Taylor, Sr. (1791–1871) and Nancy (Mathews) Taylor (1796–1879), who left Alabama for Marion County in 1845. They did not come alone; Taylor and Mathews relatives and children followed in that year and after, building homes and helping to settle the surrounding country.
The cemetery's earliest marked grave is a tender one: Emmett, the four-month-old son of E. W. and S. E. Taylor, buried in May 1860 on land belonging to Marion De Kalb (M.D.K.) Taylor. Family history suggests the ground was already in use before that — and, by a persistent family legend, that several enslaved people were buried just outside the original fence, to the north of the main cemetery.
The land itself passed down like an heirloom. M.D.K. deeded it to his father, Ward Sr., in 1868, with the family cemetery named in the deed; Nancy inherited it at Ward's death, then passed it, per his instructions, to their son J. M. Taylor, who left it in turn to his wife, Amanda Maleson (Craven) Taylor. In 1961 descendants formed a cemetery association to care for the graveyard, and they set about recovering its lost history — identifying sixteen of the people believed to lie in thirty-two unmarked graves. By 1998, thirty-two marked burials stood in Taylor Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
Taylor Cemetery holds two American stories in the same soil, and the fence line divides them. Inside it lie the settler family that came west in 1845 and prospered; just beyond it, by family tradition, lie the enslaved people whose labor made that prosperity possible — buried apart even in death.
That quiet geography says more about the antebellum South than any monument could. The people who cleared the land and built the homes were, in many cases, the ones denied a place inside the family plot. Marking those graves outside the fence, and later trying to recover the names of the unmarked, is part of the long national work of telling the whole story rather than half of it.
The cemetery is also a record of how communities settle and endure. A family that arrived in the year of statehood, land handed carefully from one generation to the next through deeds and wills, and finally a 1961 association formed to protect it — this is how ordinary Americans made places permanent. That the graveyard still welcomes Taylor descendants and anyone else who wishes to rest here shows a community that never stopped tending its own past.
If you visit
Taylor Cemetery invites slow, thoughtful looking. This is a country burial ground in the northeast corner of Texas, and its meaning lives in small details rather than grand monuments.
Find Emmett Taylor's marker, the oldest that survives, dated May 1860. An infant's grave is a quiet, sobering thing, and it anchors you in the world just before the Civil War. Then turn your attention north, toward the area beyond the original fence line. You won't see grand headstones there, but knowing the tradition — that enslaved people were buried just outside — changes how you stand in the space. Let that absence speak.
Remember, too, the work of the 1961 cemetery association, which pieced together names for graves that had gone unmarked. It's a reminder that a cemetery is never really finished; each generation decides how carefully to remember. If you're following the threads of settlement and the antebellum South through Marion County, this is a stop that rewards reflection. Walk gently, read the stones, and leave this working family cemetery just as you found it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Ward Taylor Sr.
- · Nancy Mathews Taylor
- · Marion De Kalb Taylor
Themes & tags
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