The Wilks Cemetery

This knoll overlooking Bois d’Arc Creek bottom has been a cemetery since at least 1850, when 5-year old Martha Cagle died of scarlet fever and was laid to rest. Martha is the first documented burial. She will have been resting there for 168 years when her body is disinterred and reburied. Martha was apparently not the first of Martin and Susan Cagle’s children to die. We aren’t sure of the death date or burial location of her little sister Susan, born in 1847 and yet absent from the 1850 census. Martin Gaines Cagle was born in 1809 in North Carolina, Susan Catherine Barkley in 1816 in Tennessee. They married in 1836 in Tennessee. Their eldest child, Robert, was born in Arkansas in 1838, followed by a daughter and two additional sons. The youngest of those sons, Martin, was born in 1844, in Arkansas. Little Martha was born in Texas in 1845, placing their move from Arkansas to Texas in 1844-1845. They are on the tax rolls of Fannin County in 1846, and appear to have been somewhat prosperous. They are assessed property taxes on the 214 acre parcel that contains the Cemetery, and they are listed as having two slaves. In 1850, they were living in Fannin County with six children: Robert, 12; Francis, 10; Edward, 8; Martin 6; Martha, 5; and Mary, 4. Their eighth, and last child, John, would be born the next year.

With so many youngsters in the house, one wonders if Martha’s bout of scarlet fever was a single case, or if she died amid a battle for the lives of all the children. It is sadly easy to imagine her exhausted and grieving parents performing the necessary duty of selecting the site that would become the family cemetery. How did they choose it? Was their home nearby - no trace of a dwelling place remains. Was the location simply convenient? Was it special in some way to little Martha or to her mother? Had little Susan already been laid to rest there despite there being no record? Had the location already served others in the area as a burial ground? However arrived at, the knoll overlooking Bois d’Arc bottom was a beautiful choice. From it the land falls away dramatically to the distant creek.

The passing years would not be kind to the family. Martin would follow his daughter to the grave only 2 years later, in 1852. We know from the records that Susan carried on as a landowner and head of household, and even expanded the family’s property holdings. Sons, Martin and Edward, died in 1860-1861, joining their father and sisters. Susan, herself, succumbed to death in 1861, not yet 45 years old, and leaving behind children ranging in age from 23 down to 10. Her eldest daughter, Frances, had married in 1856. Perhaps she took in the younger children. Mary is known to have lived to adulthood and married. Sons Robert and John are absent from the records following the Civil War. Robert is known to have served in the Confederacy. The date and location of his death are unknown, and he may have been lost in the War. There are eight graves in the Cagle family row in the cemetery. Other than the beautiful monument marking the resting place of Martin and Susan, the Cagle grave markers have only initials, and there are only 5 of those markers. MCS, MVC, ESC, and JHC are presumed to be Martha, Martin, Edward, and John. The fifth has the initials, SHH. Francis had married Thomas Crutcher Hale. Perhaps SHH is a member of the Hale family.

The Wilks are thought to have arrived in Texas in 1866. They can be found in the 1860 census living in Jefferson County, Iowa, with eight children, ranging from Jefferson, age 20, to Milton, a youngster of 3. Daughter, Eliza, was already married at the time of the census. Jefferson died at age 23, perhaps another casualty of the Civil War. Eliza, Martha, and Malinda remained behind in Iowa when Thomas and Margaret brought their five youngest children to Texas: Julia, age 21, Rebecca, age 16, Madison Solomon, age 15, Newton, age 11, and Milton, age 9. The family had been in Texas only three years when death struck, taking Margaret to her rest. She was buried in what had to be known at that time as the Cagle Cemetery. Julia would marry and eventually move away. Rebecca would marry, live a long life, and be buried next to her husband in the nearby White Family Cemetery. Madison Solomon would move with his wife to Oklahoma and eventually be buried there. Thomas would be laid to rest next to Margaret in 1871 at the age of 71 and the families of sons, Newton and Milton, would fill the positions to either side of them.

Newton and his wife, Mary, would bury three young boys in a line extending north from their grandmother’s grave. Brother Milton’s lost ones would extend south from Thomas’ grave. Newton joined his youngsters in 1901 though Mary, the last person to be laid to rest in the Cemetery, would not join him until 1932. Milton and his first wife, Betty, would bury three young sons before she herself died at the age of 33, leaving Milton with a son, their only surviving child. He would marry again, and he and Florence would bury a young daughter before she left him widowed for the second time, dying in 1901 just shy of her 28th birthday, leaving behind a daughter of 3. Milton would marry for the third time in 1908. He would bury a granddaughter in the family cemetery in 1915. He would lose his third wife in 1918 before being laid to rest between Florence and Betty in 1927. Though there are Wilks descendants living today in Fannin County, the old cemetery overlooking the bottom would not be used again after 1932. By the time plans were made to build a new reservoir in the county, the old cemetery was all but forgotten.

When summarized, the cemetery statistics are sobering. Burials of children make up the majority of the graves. Among the known burials are two young mothers and four parents lost in their middle years with minor children left behind. Only 2 individuals could be said to have lived to old age, and in one 8-year span from Sep 7, 1881 to Oct 21, 1889, the Wilks family buried 7 loved ones, 6 of them children. The degree of loss is staggering.

The disinterment of the cemetery has revealed the existence of 34 graves in total at the site. At least 9 of the 13 unmarked graves appear to be older than the burials in the Cagle family row, begging the question of when the cemetery was originally established and whether other families are represented. One of the unmarked graves was found in the Cagle family row, and 3 unmarked graves were sandwiched between the Cagle and Wilks rows.

Click here to walk the cemetery with us.