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Saturday, May 13, 2006

Old Cool Springs Cemetery

Today the "New Salem Invincibles" sponsored a workday at the old Cool Springs Cemetery. The abandoned cemetery is what is left of the old Cool Springs community in southern Rusk County, Texas. The cemetery had many downed trees that left markers broken and out of place (though before today someone had cut most of them up and removed them). The last burial there took place in 1938.

A church was located there at least as early as 1857, when Cool Springs Baptist Church was among the thirteen churches that met at Mt. Zion Church, Rusk County, Texas, to form the Mt. Zion Baptist Association. The oldest marked grave is of Elizabeth Brown in 1865, but the cemetery is likely older. It is not known exactly when the church ceased to exist. Research in Mt. Zion Association minutes should reveal about the time they quit representing in the association. Cool Springs hosted the Mt. Zion Association in 1881 and 1891; and the church was still meeting in 1903 -- my great-grandfather, M. L. Vaughn, pastored there in 1902-03.

A group of about two dozen folks met to fellowship around shovels, weedeaters, chain saws, rakes, axes and various sorts of clippers. Much progress was made, but much work remains to be done. The group decided to meet again on Saturday May 27 for another workday.

Pictures of Cool Springs Cemetery and headstones

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bro. Vaughn,
You all might want to consider what we did at my mother's family cemetery. It is near Garfield, GA and was no longer being used. So we cleaned it then cemented it over making sure each grave stone was in its proper space. From then on it is just a matter of keeping the vines and such like poison ivy from growing over it. It's much easier to keep and family can still go by see the place where so many of the family are buried. They were Baptist.
Ed Fountain