Birdston Community and Cemetery

When V. I. Bird opened a general mercantile store about 2 miles to the northwest in the 1860s, Birdston Community was founded. As local economy then developed on cotton, a gin was soon built near the store. In a few years, store and gin were relocated a mile east of this cemetery, at halfway point on main road Fairfield to Corsicana. The Birdston Post Office opened Dec. 11, 1866. By 1867 the community also had a school; by 1872 a church building, used by all faiths.
(Streetman, On Farm to Market 416, off U.S. 75, 3 miles northeast of Streetman)

The cemetery was opened on land donated by Edd and Juliett Burleson for church and school purposes. The first grave, located near the church, was that of a child, Mary Rayburn, whose family had been traveling from Fairfield to Corsicana, stopping at Sherrard's boarding house in Birdston where the child fell ill and died. A second grave was dug near the church when T. J. Gilbert died on Dec. 5, 1872. By 1888 additional cemetery land was sold to trustees by Mrs. Burleson.

When Birdston was bypassed in 1909 by Burlington Rock Island Railroad, it lost its post office and business; the school closed in 1920. The cemetery has continued in use through ensuing years, and in the 1950s had a new section annexed by purchase of acreage from the Charley Gregory Estate.

Location: Three miles on US 75 on FM 416

Image submitted by Roy B. Rodes, photo by Ed Basham

The text of the historical markers have been posted here with the permission of the Texas Historical Commission

Notes: 

Ed Basham of Ft. Worth was at the Birdston Cemetery yesterday and took this photo.  The name of Sherrard appears on the historical marker.

James A. Basham was married to Nellie McCrary in Navarro County in 1894 and her parents were Lonnie and Dora Bell McCrary. After Lonnie's death c1880, Dora Bell married J. W. (Jake) Sherrard and from the information I have all three are supposedly buried in a small cemetery between Birdston and Streetman.  Ed found the grave of a daughter, Hattie Bell, in the Birdston Cemetery, b:  16 Jul 1891 d: 1 Jun 1895.  This was fortunate, as she would never have appeared on a census record.

Roy B. Rodes