Honey Grove, Texas

A Tribute

Published in the Honey Grove Signal-Citizen about 1938
Written by H. P. Allen, assisted by W. J. Erwin

A tribute to the good men and women who are resting peacefully in Oakwood and other cemeteries.

The Honey Grove cemetery was started in April, 1846. In that year Mr. James M. Gilmer died in April. Having come from Adair County, Ky., he arrived in Honey Grove in November, 1845 with his family and bought land from Dr. J. J. Nicholson, the tract of land on which most of the town is built. Mr. Gilmer lived only from Nov. 1845 until early in April 1846. After his death his widow (who is a sister of Mrs. Allen and also Miss Parrish and Ben Parrish) requested T. J. Allen to select a suitable place for a burying ground, as no one had ever been buried here. He selected the present site, which was on his 820 acres bought of John McKenzie, who had bought it from Dr. J. J. Nicholson, Dr. Nicholson having secured patent to two and half sections, making his full allowance of a homestead. The writer holds today a patent on parchment and signed by Anson Jones, president of the Republic of Texas. After Mr. Gilmer was buried, John T. Allen deeded to the public three acres out of the J. J. Nicholson survey, described by meets and bounds, to be used for a public burying ground, free of any cost. There was no organization to take charge and lay it off in an orderly manner, so when there was to be a burial the family of the deceased selected any part of the grounds that suited them, which accounts or the lack of order in the old portion of the cemetery. Now, this occurred before this writer was born, and if you ask how I know, my reply is that my father and mother told me. There were so few people here that the public knew it and acted on it by taking their dead there and burying them there. Two of the three men, S. A. and Jack Erwin, who dug the graves, told me so. Not a year before Mr. Gus Erwin passed away he told me that some man was telling that he had helped dig the first grave, when, in fact, it was he and his brother Jack and another, whose name I have forgotten, but it was not the one claiming to have helped. Many years after this we ran across the deed my father had made in the old family Bible. It was the usual form of warranty deed and acknowledged before a notary public. This writer was so ignorant of titles that he supposed there was nothing more to do to it. My father thought he had sent it to Bonham for record, buy it does not appear to have been recorded, but there is not a court in Texas that would disturb the occupants after holding actual possession for 90 years.

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