#buriedtwice
Currently the oldest known African American cemetery in Denton County, St John's cemetery rests on ~1.5 acres of land in Pilot Point that was initially a burial ground for enslaved persons on the Bonner family plantation (the largest on record in the county).
After their emancipation, a new community of freedpersons congregated in this area with the establishment of St John's Church (and school) whose trustees took on oversight responsibilities of the cemetery until the early twentieth century.
In 1918, however, neighboring white landowners executed a sale recorded with inaccurate boundaries that included the cemetery in an adjacent land parcel. Over the next two decades, burials dwindled as St. John’s cemetery was included in subsequent sales among white landowners which left the site “landlocked” and likely increasingly inaccessible to the African American community. By the time land boundaries were corrected in the 1960s, both the St John’s cemetery and community had been largely erased from existence. The burial site remained largely unknown to the larger public until it was rediscovered in the late 1990s, only to be forgotten once again until local scholars and advocates began to push for its protection, preservation, and recognition twenty years later. These efforts, however, have been repeatedly hindered by the fact that the land upon which the cemetery sits today has no legally recognized owner, as the last deed of record (dated 1891) refers to the initial St John’s Church trustees and their heirs with property boundaries that run adjacent to three other privately owned land parcels providing no public ingress. Although minimal documentation has thus far been identified within the historic archive regarding the St. John’s community’s disappearance, scholars investigating these land transactions have noted the upward trend of white supremacist violence in Denton County around the same time which led to the forced removal of a Black community known as Quakertown from Denton’s inner-city. Research into St. John’s remains ongoing but is severely hindered by a lack of regular access to the community’s cemetery.
As a result of the diligent efforts of community advocates who have pushed county officials for more than a decade to acknowledge, protect, and preserve the site, on December 18, 2023, the Texas Historical Commission certified and declared St John’s a Historic Texas Cemetery thereafter making it subject to all laws, rules, and regulations regarding cemeteries in accordance with Tex. Admin. Code Title 13, Section § 22.6.1 and Texas Health & Safety Code, Section 711.041. Denton County officials, however, abandoned all efforts to preserve or care for the site soon after this THC declaration. As a result, the cemetery remains abandoned and ignored as it falls into further disrepair and overgrowth.