Long Cemetery To Host
Historical Marker Dedication
And Memorial Day Services

by: Bobby McDonald

Travel down a lonesome country road (HCR4120) and turn on CR-1126, near Turkey Creek, where cattle are grazing on the prairie and local farmers are rolling-up the first cutting of hay, and you'll find the historic Long Cemetery. Saturday, June 3, 2006, will mark the annual Homecoming and Memorial Day Services, that are an annual event, but this year, the Cemetery Association will be conducting the dedication of the newly installed Historical Marker, received from the Texas State Historical Society.

 

Family names that include: Gaines, White, Plunkett, Ward, Preston, Webb, Romans, Warren, McQueen, Vick, Sheppard, Winniford, Boatman, Martin, Pickens, Irons, Junell, Long, Hall, Wolfe, Cameron, Roberson, Marks, and Akins, are among those pioneers buried in the small cemetery.

As Texas Rangers were settling in at Black Jack Grove, on a campsite for protection from the Indians, and developing a trade center on the Jefferson Trail, James M. and Mary Long settled land along Turkey Creek, south of Black Jack Grove, in the 1850s. Legend has it that a family was passing through the area, when their small daughter died in 1860, and James Long gave the family a place to bury their beloved daughter. By 1865, James had remarried to Susan Luttrell and very likely his first wife, Mary Long, is interred in an unmarked grave in the Long Cemetery.

The first marked grave in the small cemetery is that of John M. Webb, who died in 1869.

Lee Winniford, a descendent of the Winniford Family, who is buried in the Long Cemetery and who was reared in the area, writes about the early graveyard workings, family dinners, and the Long Cemetery, in her historical book about the area, "Following Old Fence Lines." The book is available at the Hopkins County Genealogical Society, for those who would like to learn more about this historic area of Hopkins County.

Saturday's dedication will begin at 11:00 a.m., with a presentation by the Hopkins County Military Coalition. Gerald and Patty White will unveil the historical marker, that they have worked to obtain for the cemetery.

For information about the occasion, you may contact Geneva Long Bayse, at (903)994-2983.

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