A doctor in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, asked to meet me at the Old Concord Graveyard adjacent to Concord Baptist Church at noon on Halloween. The church is one of the oldest churches in Hunt County, if not the oldest. Founded by Benjamin Watson, a Baptist minister who organized several churches in the eastern part of the county before the county was created; yet some of the earliest settlers already lived in the area. Watson built his first church at Shady Grove, then one at Shiloh before organizing Concord. From there he moved on to Bethlehem in northeast Collin County. The Concord church has moved a few times, hence the name Old Concord.
Churches like the one at Old Concord in the community of Jacobia followed an old European custom not often seen in the United States. These are known as consecrated burial grounds or graveyards. Today Old Concord Church faces west on Farm Road 118. The graveyard lies just south of the church. All tombstones face east/west in the true Southern tradition allowing the deceased to rise from death facing Jerusalem. It is an immaculately kept site, out on a flat prairie still tilled for crops.
A friend and I met with a tall, fairly young man. He came over as we walked up, introduced himself as an eye doctor from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on his way to Yantis to spend the weekend dove hunting. Passing nearby, he stopped to visit the cemetery and maybe find the site of the family home.
My son had warned me about meeting strangers in a cemetery on Halloween Day. But Dr. Cobb was a delightful person. He told us his paternal great-great grandparents owned and farmed land around Jacobia before migrating to Oklahoma after statehood. I had to softly chuckle when he asked if the soil was blackland or sandy. In the Cherokee language he told us his maternal grandmother did not speak English so he and his siblings his parents, as well as his children were fluent in Cherokee. He did interpret as neither of us understand Cherokee.
He shared family history, stories that are usual for that time period not only in Hunt County but throughout rural United States at that time. The first Cobb family to arrive in Hunt County after 1875 were Jacob Wilkins Cobb and his wife Martha Jane Frances Matthews. Jacob was a successful cotton farmer who probably took most of his yield to the Vittitoe Gin just down the road. Martha Jane was the niece of Rebecca Lucinda Nicholson, the great-grandfather of President Jimmy Carter; a relationship few can claim.
The family continued farming in Oklahoma until the 1930s. The Dust Bowl, poor sales of crops, and the Great Depression took their toll on the family. Dr. Cobb’s father, another Dr. Cobb, was born in California. Parts of the extended family fled there during the Depression. Yet, the family was back in Oklahoma before 1965.
Dr. Cobb brought a wonderful photograph to give me. Taken in 1896 with all the extended family standing on the porch, it is a treasure. It caught my eye because of the carpentry on the house. Five columns held up the porch, all siding was from a mill and smoothly finished out, and decorative wood embellishments clearly showed the house was well built. Definitely not a share-croppers house. It is no longer standing but is an excellent example of fine carpentry in rural Hunt County at the turn of the 20th. Everyone was fashionably dressed for rural Texas at that time.
All in all, it was a delightful visit.