Place:Lone Star Cemetery, Red River, Texas, United States

Located about eight miles southwest of Clarksville, on County Road 1330. It was established in December 1878 on a corner of his land by Calvin Gilmore Jackson, when both his infant son and his own brother died within a few weeks of each other. In the early days, it often was known as the "Jackson Cemetery." It now has about 500 burials and operates as a community cemetery for the neighborhood. An annual summer "working" by the families of those buried here keeps the grounds tidy and affords an excellent opportunity to learn a great deal of local and family history. The cemetery includes a number of "shell" graves -- scraped earth, decorated with fresh-water mussel shells and (more commonly since the mid-20th century) the sawed off bottoms of colored bottles. Any grass is carefully removed and the dirt re-mounded a bit each year. This style of burial is relatively common in older Alabama and Mississippi cemeteries, but this is the only location of its kind in the northern half of Texas.

Resources

• FindAGrave.com: Lone Star Cemetery
• Transcription at Texas GenWeb, Red River County