Before I get into today's story, I would like to pass along some information of historical interest that occurred this past week. Last Tuesday, there was a funeral of historical importance in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

If you will remember back to the stories on television and radio along with the articles in various newspapers including the Corsicana Daily Sun, La Salle's ship, The Belle, was found and was subsequently excavated in the middle of Matagorda Bay. The archeologists found the remains of one sailor in the bottom of the ship.

For many months, the researchers were hopeful of determining who this person might be. They even went to the expense of going to France to get DNA samples from descendants of several of the sailors known to have been on this voyage. (Probably a first in regards to an excuse for taking a vacation to France), but the final outcome of the DNA testing proved to be useless.

Then there was a period of discussion between the two countries as to which country would ultimately be responsible for re-burying the sailor. They finally agreed he would be re-interred at the State Cemetery in Texas. We were invited to attend the occasion but due to conflicting issues, we could not make the trip.

On the invitation, it said the ambassador from France would be one of the keynote speakers along with officials from several departments in the state including the Archeology Division of the Texas Historical Commission. It would have been neat to have been able to attend the ceremony.

Recently I alluded to the fact that a lot of research is required of us when we are trying to reconstruct the history of a cemetery. If the cemetery has only a few family members, usually there isn't much information available about who is buried in the plot but we try to get as much as possible. The Histories Division people at the Texas Historical Commission prefer we try to write several pages about each cemetery.

With some of the cemeteries, this is not a problem while others are exasperating to say the very least. Every time we measure and photograph a small inactive cemetery, we wish someone would step forward and tell us all about who is interred in the plots.

However, in most cases and especially with the earlier cemeteries, the descendants have passed away or moved off to parts unknown. Once in a while, we are lucky enough to find references mainly in genealogical publications and Web sites. There are several good Web sites that might yield useful information about someone.

One of these is the Web site run by the Mormon church. They have information about many people who have resided in the United States in the past. They may know where someone was born but at the same time, fail to know where the individual died and is buried. At least it gives us a place to start.

Locally we are very fortunate to have the two-volume set written by Nancy Samuels and Barbara Knox. These books are titled "Old Northwest Texas, Navarro County, 1846-1860." Without these publications, Bruce and I would be much slower in acquiring necessary information about the cemeteries.

Pin Oak Cemetery has been both fun because of who is buried in there, and exasperating because of the volume of deeds researched in an effort to gain knowledge about the people and the land. Normally we go to the courthouse and start pulling deeds starting with the current owner and then proceeding backwards. Hopefully on each deed, there will be a line stating in what book and what page the current seller got the land he is conveying to the new buyer.

With Pin Oak, this endeavor became a nightmare. Back in the 1950s, one individual started buying up any and every tract of land he could acquire as long as it touched any land he already owned. These tracts ranged in size from as small as three-fourths of an acre to tracts larger than 100 acres. I found over 40 transactions dealing with this one person.

Our main concern was to try to find out who owned the land when the cemetery was first started in 1869 or possibly earlier since we knew who owned it today. After wading though all of those 1950 deeds, it was fairly easy to go back to around 1908 when there was a lawsuit between a wife whose husband had recently passed away, and her husband's brother. The court decreed the woman would receive part of the land along with a couple of houses. There was a value placed on the acreage and the structures. By studying the Tobin maps, we knew the cemetery was located on a 57 1/2-acre tract but we could not proceed backwards from the decree deed.

At that point, we decided to start with the very first deed and try to come forward. The problem with this method concerned the physical size of the original tract of land patented. A league of land is comprised of 4,428 acres and this particular league was granted by the Mexican government in the year of 1835. The next year, Texas and Mexico were heavily embroiled in the revolution for independence so nothing happened with this tract of land. In fact, it was several years before any transaction occurred.

In 1840, the entire league was conveyed to a man living in Sabine County near the coast. However, the deed was not officially recorded in Navarro County until after we were split out of Robertson County, in 1848. In the next year, the league passed to one of the man's daughters and from his will we know the man owned a number of slaves because he named 28 and willed them to the same daughter. He also set free two children and requested that money would be set aside for provisions for these two children.

The next deed transferred the league to a resident of Galveston who conveyed half of the league to William L. Love and James Dunn Sr. James Dunn Sr. may not have come to Navarro County except briefly to check on his holdings, if at all.

On the other hand, William Love who had migrated here around 1845 was already buying and selling land. In the history books pertaining to early Robertson County, we know that William Love had a fine house in the area of old Franklin, and James Dunn Sr. lived nearby.

I would guess that some form of an agreement between the two men existed before William Love came here.

Next week: The brick walls we found when researching Pin Oak

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2/15/2004 BILL YOUNG: Continuing search and research for Pin Oak Cemetery data
 

Last week I wrote about how we enjoyed looking up information about the various individuals buried in Pin Oak Cemetery. I also mentioned how exasperating researching the deeds had been. Every cemetery Bruce and I work on requires some deed research. If we are lucky, one trip to the county clerk's office in the courthouse and we are successful in locating what we need.

Typically, we start with the current owner and proceed backwards through time with each previous deed and hope we find each deed reference in the description of the previous deed and land owner, then everything flows along relatively smoothly.

The "fly in the ointment" can rise up and bite you at any moment if any of these descending deeds fail to mention the previous deed. Sometimes we can be lucky enough to know by chance the name of the previous owner. If this information is available, we can look in both the "forward" book which lists the grantor first and the grantee second. They also have the reverse book which lists the grantee first and the grantor second For those of you who are not familiar with grantor/grantee, the grantor is the person selling the land and the grantee is the buyer. Bruce and I spend more time looking in the reverse book searching for the name of who bought a certain tract. If we are successful in locating that transaction, then we know from whom the grantee bought the tract. This carries us one step farther back in the chain of title, a term describing all of the various land transactions on a specific tract of land from the present back to the very first sale.

The first transaction is usually the official patent given by either the State of Texas or the government of Mexico to a certain individual. Most of the original patents issued by the State or Republic of Texas had to do with the exact year a certain individual migrated to Texas or if did the person happened to participate in the Revolutionary War for Texas Independence. The Mexican land grants usually were very large, typically a league (4,428 acres) or possibly even larger.

One early Spanish land grant located along both sides of Richland Creek from north of Corbet to the southern county line stated it was for 11 leagues of land. This is almost 49,000 acres of land. From what I have been able to determine, the person who received this land lived in Mexico and never took possession of his grant. After Texas won its independence, most Mexican land grants were considered invalid.
The tract of land where the Pin Oak Cemetery is located is a Mexican land grant of one league in the amount of 4,428 acres. This fact alone creates a special problem when trying to locate a cemetery containing only one and one-half acres. I mentioned last week that I had tried to go backwards and ran into a brick wall in 1908 when the land where I thought the cemetery was located passed to a lady in a lawsuit. Then I tried to come forward from the original 1835 patent. Somewhere about 1860, several things happened that hampered our research.

In several cases, deeds whereby some person sold a tract to an individual and shortly thereafter, the same buyer is acquiring the same piece of land from another person. And to further add to our misery, the dimensions of the various tracts of land were written in varas. A vara is a measurement used by the Spanish and Mexicans instead of feet or yards.

Here in Texas, a vara is 33 1/3 inches, slightly less than a yard. For this old man who spent about 40 years in the concrete business dealing in feet and inches, thinking or drawing a vara doesn't come very easily. Add to this fact that I have been involved in archeology since 1968. Generally speaking, all archeological reports are written in the metric system so that archeologists from Europe can read our reports. Stupid! We migrated here to get away from their way of thinking. Why should we conform to their measurements?

Maybe the younger generation can handle the metric system but I am too old to be very comfortable using it.

Since the early deeds concerning the Pin Oak Cemetery had Spanish measurements, this made it extremely difficult for me to be able to layout a plot for any of the tracts. One particular deed stated this particular tract began 2,500 varas north of the south corner marked by a rock. Then the survey proceeded westward until the line came into contact with the channel of Pin Oak Creek. At that junction, the line proceeded with the meanders of the creek at each change in the channel and the varas from point to point were noted.

One summer job that I had between semesters at Navarro College was spent working for the Texas Highway Department as it was called in those days. I spent three months working in the survey crew and during that time, I acquired a small amount of knowledge about surveying. Too small! Every time I tried to layout one of the deeds associated with Pin Oak, it looked like a drunk worm had slid across the page but the worst problem was trying to determine exactly where I should place the drawing in relationship to the perimeter.

After several weeks of wanting to beat my head on a brick wall, I decided to try a new and different approach. I went to see Mrs. Dockery at Navarro County Abstract to see if they could help me with my problem. She agreed to aid us in our research and every since, the ladies working there have been fantastic.

Now that I thought that this problem had been solved, I started looking at more deeds dealing with the land surrounding Pin Oak. Once more, another brick wall. I still did not feel totally comfortable in thinking I had the proper deed since I just could not find any reference to the cemetery.

Finally in desperation, I contacted Keven Davis, my surveyor friend whose surveying company is located in Waxahachie. I pleaded with him to try to take time and come to Corsicana so that he might sort though those deeds laying each and every one out on apiece of drafting paper. Keven promised to be here the next week but this event failed to materialize.

However during the initial phone conversation, he suggested I ask Mrs. Dockery if she could show some old abstracts associated with the league survey. Keven said that many of the older abstracts had a map attached near the front of each one. On my next trip to Navarro Abstract, Mrs. Dockery got out a couple of old abstracts and told me to start reading though them. These abstracts are printed on very thin onion paper. Not only is the paper almost transparent, the typing is fading on many sheets.

Within 10 minutes of reading through the first abstract, not only did I find the deed that I was searching for but also the same deed set aside the one and one-half acre Pin Oak Cemetery forever.

Bill Young is a Daily Sun columnist. His column appears Sundays