Mulberry Cemetery

Marker Text:

Located approximately two miles south of Red River, Mulberry was established in the early 1880s as a small farming community. One of the first settlers in Mulberry was Civil War CaptainThomas Lightfoot and his family from Alabama, who bought several thousand acres of land along Red River. In 1883, Thomas Lightfoot donated land to the Mulberry community to be used for a cemetery and a one-room school. Eventually, Mulberry school closed and half of its property was sold by D. B. Deupree in 1951 to the cemetery. Joe C. Denton paid for the land as a gift to the community.

  The oldest part of the cemetery is located on the north end overlooking Mulberry bottom. The first recorded burial on the property was that of two-year-old Allis May, in 1876. Other early burials date as far back as 1881. In the northwest corner of the original burial ground is the Mexican section shaded with trees. The first Mexican family to come to Mulberry was Ferman and Rossaria Portillo and their three children in 1902. Over the years the community experienced multiple natural disasters which took several lives. Some of these events include: the 1905 flooding of Mulberry bottom, 1919 Mulberry cyclone and the 1959 tornado which destroyed many of the tombstones and cemetery fence.

  There are several war veterans buried in the cemetery including the only known buried civil war veteran B. F. Mosley. All veterans are honored by the main gate entrance flag pole, which is set in a concrete stand embedded with the veterans of foreign wars emblem. A cross and monument stand on the midpoint between the original burial ground and the site of the old Mulberry school in memory of those lost and unmarked graves.

More about this cemetery is at the Fannin County GenWeb site.