Matagorda County’s history is one of its top features to me, and it continues to educate me.
Last Saturday, I covered the Official Texas Historical Marker Dedication Ceremony north of Pledger for the Jones-Jackson Cemetery.
It seems to me that all cemeteries tell stories and the Jones-Jackson Cemetery is no different.
Carol Sue Gibbs, Matagorda County Historical Commission chairman, proclaimed the ceremony and the cemetery were history.
Period.
Most of those at the ceremony had ties to this area of Matagorda County a few miles north of Pledger.
After all, the cemetery began in the 1870s.
A family tree that required hours of work was on display Saturday showing the long lines of kinship that make up this cemetery.
Carol Sue was right, this was history.
And the two of us have seen this in many other Matagorda County cemeteries – all of which are part of the history fabric of this county.
Perhaps I feel a certain sense of envy for the only cemetery of
my family is in Trinity, where my mother and father are buried.
Mother was from Livingston and my father from Good Pine, La. – it has merged with nearby Jena.
Neither had real ties to Trinity.
Except they did.
They moved to Trinity when I was a freshman at A&M, and I was unhappy there as I missed my high school friends in far-off Kerrville.
But Trinity was where they had their happiest times in their life during World War II.
And Trinity is where they are buried.
It doesn’t stretch over decades or even centuries as it does in the Jones-Jackson Cemetery, or many others in Matagorda County, but it is history.
I think my advanced age and long love of history helps me better understand and appreciate how much these places mean.
The Jones-Jackson cemetery lies near Caney Creek.
A friend at Saturday’s service asked me if I knew why so many cemeteries are located near waterways.
I can think of a few others on Caney Creek because of the long-ago plantations that lined the Caney in the 19th Century.
Mary Belle Ingram studied many of those cemeteries in her long search of history in Matagorda County.
Carol Sue and I benefited greatly from her sharing her tales with us.
I can guess at why final resting places are near water, or used to be anyway. I don’t know.
But it’s history.