The Taylor Family Cemetery

Taylor Family Cemetery historical maker, est. 2001

Samuel and Martha Taylor, their three sons, Benjamin, Moses, and Richard, along with their three slaves, Kijeah, Matilda, and James moved to Texas in 1859 from North Carolina. Samuel and his son Moses are marked as being two of the earliest settlers of the Little Elm area. The Taylors settled and began farming on land that, according to the 1864 Denton County property tax record, consisted of 460 acres. Moses Taylor raised horses and sold one to the famous local outlaw Sam Bass, who often raced it down the main streets of Denton.

The Taylor Family Cemetery was established on the Taylor farm with the earliest remaining gravestone belonging to Beulah Lunn, the wife of the family that moved to Texas with the Taylors, who died on January 27, 1870. Of the 16 remaining identifiable gravestones in the cemetery today, 12 belong to members of the Taylor family. Beulah Lunn’s husband and son are also buried in the Taylor Cemetary.

The other 12 marked graves are unidentifiable, only being denoted with random items such as brick borders, non-engraved headstones, headstone bases, just footstones, or a combination of the items. At least 12 graves are completely unmarked, with the only indication of graves being present are the significant depressions in the ground that are aligned with the identifiable graves in the cemetery. Many of the identifiable graves belong to children under 10 years of age, attesting to the lack of readily available medicine to combat any diseases that occurred during the 1870s and 1880s. The last known burial occurred in 1918.

Today, the cemetery is enclosed by a fence and is readily accessible by a paved road in the City of Oak Point. Due to the age and lack of maintence of the cemetery, it is quite possible that there are a number of unmarked graves outside the fenced-in area.

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