Hood County Texas Genealogical Society
by Pete Kindall
Hood County News – March 6,
2004
Vinegar
Hill is a detective’s delight.
There’s
no town, no population, little documented history to prove that what supposedly
happened really happened.
But
there is a cemetery. And that’s a
stirring starting point for researchers, statewide and local, documenting the
existence of post-Columbian civilization near the municipality of Paluxy.
Chris
Dyer and Frank Saffarrans did their homework…as much as was available to
do. The primary source material dried
up long ago.
Anybody
who might know the God’s truth about Vinegar Hill is buried on it among a grove
of junipers that prevented Dyer and Saffarrans from documenting the entirety of
the obscure graveyard.
The
parasitic vegetation proved as impregnable as barbed wire.
“You
can’t really know how many people are buried at Vinegar Hill Cemetery,”
Saffarrans, of the Hood County Genealogical Society, said. “It’s so grown up with junipers.”
You
can’t blame the junipers for the cemetery’s abandonment, abuse and neglect,
though.
“According
to a lady who lives nearby and a lady who’s a historian, someone went in there
in the 1970s, took the headstones and used them in a construction project.”
For
shame.
“Carl
Droste owns the land now,” Saffarrans said.
“He said he’s going to get a work crew together this spring to cut down
the junipers.”
But
for a theological dispute, Vinegar Hill might be as cosmopolitan today as
nearby Glen Rose.
“There
was a church in the Vinegar Hill area in the 1870s,” Saffarrans said. “One of the factions decided to have a
dance. That so infuriated the other
faction that the congregation
split.
“The
second faction turned over the floorboards because the church floor had been
defiled by the dance.”
A
Baker’s Crossing historian who probably wishes to be nameless said he was told
that the structure, whether a church or school or community cabin, was
originally located near the site of Vinegar Hill Cemetery.
That
makes sense. It would have shortened
the length of funeral processions between structure and graveyard.
Mean-spirited
ex-citizens gave Vinegar Hill its unfortunate moniker, Saffarrans said.
“Supposedly,
it was said that members of the remaining faction had so much vinegar in their
blood that nothing would ever grow on that hill.”
They
forgot that junipers can grow in cement.
“The
name stuck,” Saffarrans said. “The
people buried there probably don’t appreciate the vinegar connotation.”
Vinegar
Hill was among county cemeteries identified and mapped by Saffarrans and Dyer,
a Texas Historical Commission staffer, in an extensive THC survey.
Intriguing
is the story of Dunagan Cemetery southwest of Granbury.
“I’d
never visited that cemetery before,” Saffarrans said. “There was never anybody in a house nearby.
“Chris
went with me this time. He suggested we
ask at another house that turned out to be Paluxy Valley Ranch, owned by Troy
and Verla Milstead.
“They
said when they bought the land, the seller asked at closing, ‘Do you know you
just bought a cemetery?’ Verla got
interested in it. She’s cleared a lot
of the underbrush.
“There
are four graves there, plus 30 marked by stones. Three or four are said to be Indians.”
Every
grave tells a story. G.W. Dunagan’s
tells a dandy.
“It
just says G.W.
Dunagan on the tombstone,” Saffarrans said. “I looked in the Judge Davis (county historical) papers and
learned the man’s full name was George Washington Dunagan.
“He
died in 1871, the same year he married.
His only child was born after he died.
Even though it was a girl, she was named George Washington after her
father.
“They
called her Georgie for short. The
mother (Martha) never remarried. She
died at the age of 92.”
The
Caroline Orum tale tugs at the heartstrings.
Caroline gave up the ghost in 1880 after bearing nine children. She’s buried oh-so-alone
west of Tolar.
“That
individual grave was real interesting to me,” Saffarrans said. “I thought there was just going to be a field
stone, and there turned out to be a tombstone by itself.
“I
looked up Caroline Orum in the census.
She was head of a household with a husband, nine children and two
grandchildren.
“She
died three months after the census.
That must have been traumatic for the family. The father died two years later in Limestone County, so evidently
the family broke up after she died.”
Millington
Cemetery is forgotten by many but not by those with ancestors buried in it.
“It’s
on the Millington Ranch, about a mile off the highway to Lipan,” Saffarrans
said. “You go through two dry-weather
crossings of Robinson Creek. It’s a
little cemetery almost in the middle of nowhere.
“The
person who led us there is the son of the ranch owner. He knew exactly where it was. He’d found it while he was hunting.”
Saffarrans
and Dyer confirmed the existence of another cemetery on property near
Millington Ranch. They didn’t confirm
the site.
“The
person who showed us Millington Cemetery wasn’t well enough acquainted with the
owners of the other property to go on their property,” Saffarrans said.
“That
site is on the geodetic map. I wouldn’t
expect to find anything but the remains of a few graves there.”
Saffarrans
is much beholden, he said, to Mildred Thormann of Lipan. She wrote the definitive history of Hood
County cemeteries.
“She
spent about five years visiting all the cemeteries and recording them,” he
said. “Her book was really the basis
for what Chris and I did.
“I’ve
never met her, but I’ve always been thankful for her.”