The Family Plot

[flamin lib]

I found these in Dresden, Texas. Current population 25. Originally founded in 1836 and was a major trading post with the local Indians. It died when the rail road went through Corsicanna about 50 miles away.

Bookmark this page and when you think life is shitting on you, check the dates on these markers.



















If you check the dates on J.R.'s stone and the date on the last child's marker you'll see that JR died one month before his last child. The old guy was still makin' babies at 62. If this isn't the triumph of hope over experience I don't know what is . . .

[Tindalos]

1. Life was very hard back then

I can't imagine the pain of losing one child, let alone losing so many. Those poor people. People must have been made of very tough stuff in those days.

[DollyM]

2. tough stuff indeed . . .

My great grandfather was the original settler in the town in which I grew up. He came here in the fall of 1859 and moved his family of 12 into a cave in the side of a hill and wintered there until they were able to build a proper house in the spring. The land where that cave is one turned into our family cemetery and generations of our family have all been buried there. It is fascinating to go there and just read the tombstones, many of children gone too soon like those above. You can see pieces of history there too, a whole families wiped out during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918 and so forth. There are even some unmarked graves, so I am told, of some Native American babies that were buried there. Old cemeteries are fascinating places with many unique stories that can be pieced together by the diligent.