Almost Forgotten

I went on a weekend trip with my wife last weekend. We started to go to Athens, Texas, where my wife went years ago, but ended up in Palestine, Texas. We like what we saw, so we did a little sightseeing, and ended up staying the night.

The trip home was remarkable. The East Texas woods are beautiful this time of the year. With the rolling hills, trees budding, and greening pastures, the view was awe inspiring.

While travelling through the Sam Houston National Forest, we saw a historical marker on the left that caught our attention. We stopped, read the sign, and begin to wonder about what we were seeing. The sign explained a cemetery, but none was to be seen. My wife decided to get out, and go up the small embankment to see if there was one behind the barbed wire fence.

I soon followed, and found the barbed wire was covered with a split garden hose. It was obvious this was to allow climbing through the fence. A few yards in we discovered the cemetery.

The old wrought iron fence was bent, and damaged, but still marked the perimeter. It was obvious it was suffering from years of neglect, but the grass between the headstones was beaten down by people walking among the graves.

One large headstone caught my eye, so I took a photo.

 Among the other headstones were six in a row that simply had "Infant" scribed into the stone. According to the marker, they were the six children of the thirteen children that didn't survive.

As we looked, I was struck by how it was obvious there was nobody left to take care of the cemetery. If there were living relatives, they were probably scattered, didn't have any ties to the area, and if there were, they didn't care.

So, a piece of history is slowly becoming part of the land that someone once worked to survive. It's a sobering thing to realize, and is probably the final outcome of most everyone we know.