Titus County, Texas Cemetery Search - Center Grove Cemetery

Center Grove Cemetery is one of the larger public cemeteries located in Southeast Titus County. Center Grove was originally called the Yancey Cemetery because David Yancey, Sr. donated the first parcel of land for use as a cemetery and church in the mid 1860s. An orphaned infant member of the group that traveled with Yancey from Tennessee to Texas was the first to be buried here. Veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars are buried here. Only a rough stone marks many graves, including the first. The cemetery's name was changed in 1900 because it was located in the same area as the Center Grove Church of Christ.

A Texas historical marker awarded to the cemetery stands at the main entrance reads "Center Grove Cemetery"

The cemetery is fenced and kept in very good condition. A new section was recently added on the south side of the County road. This necessitated partitioning the Cemetery for this study between what will be called Center Grove North and Center Grove South. The Dick Justiss family donated the land for Center Grove South in 1972. It is enclosed by a decorative fence and only flat monuments are used.

Various and sundry markers have been used throughout the cemetery as follows: The Rosewell plot contains a concrete monument with no inscription. A top portion of a monument with no inscription has been reset in concrete. There are eight unreadable funeral home markers. One funeral home marker is partially readable with "Daphne ----Sept----Jun 24----" visible. One hundred fifty (150) concrete slabs mark known grave sites. One concrete slab has unreadable inscriptions. An inscribed native stone was used and is now unreadable. Three concrete blocks mark other locations. A dark gray concrete slab appears to have once been inscribed. Five concrete portions of pillar-like construction mark other sites and five concrete rounds mark others. There is one significant native stone. A small marker with "W. A. L. S. 'Leg'" is said to mark the location where W. A. Lunsford had his amputated leg buried. (This brings up the questions, "Was it buried 6 feet down; and does it take up a whole grave space?) There are two other small monuments that show "Ophilla died 1864" and "Ophilla's Baby"

DRIVING DIRECTIONS FROM THE TITUS COUNTY COURTHOUSE:

Travel 0.3 mile South on Madison Street to Ferguson Road. Turn left (East) on Ferguson Road (which becomes Texas Highway 49) and travel 5.5 miles to the intersection of FM 1000. Turn left onto FM 1000 and continue for 2.0 miles to the intersection (from the right) with County Road 4340. Turn right onto CR 4340 and proceed for 0.4 miles. The main cemetery entrance is on the left side of the road.

GPS COORDINATES: 33°07.774' N 094°50.723' W

DECORATION DAY: Third Sunday in April

MARKED BURIALS INDEXED IN TCS DATABASE: 707 (2008-04-01)

FREE BURIAL INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FOR THIS CEMETERY.

SEE "HOW TO REQUEST BURIAL INFORMATION" PAGE FOR DETAILS.

(NOTE: This cemetery contains un-named burials marked by irregular makers like natural stones and other methods that could not be included in the Titus Cemetery Search database.)

LAST TCS PHYSICAL SURVEY: 2005-09-13

Historical information for this cemetery was provided by and used with the permission of David Horton, and was compiled from Mr. Horton's work and the earlier work of Lynch Harper. Map provided courtesy of Ark-La-Tex Council of Governments GIS department. Please forward any mapping questions to http://www.atcog.org/gis_mapping.htm.