New monument marks unknown girl’s grave site

By Dannie Oliveaux| publisher@campcountynow.com

Members of the Community Line community got together to constructed a stone monument 160 years later to remember an unknown young girl buried in the Riley Cemetery in the 1850s.
In 1857, a wagon train from the East was passing through the community. During the trip, the young girl died and her parents asked a local landowner if they would bury their daughter on his land, according to Trev Powell.
“He said ‘yes,’ go up on that hill and bury her,” said Powell. “And they buried her here and they marked her grave with some old sand stones that were so prevalent at that time in East Texas.”
Powell said no one knows what caused the girl’s death, or how she was buried in the grave.
“Most likely they may have buried her in a blankett,” he said.
The girl’s grave was the first grave in what is known today as the Riley Cemetery by the County Line Church.
Powell said as they moved other stones, individuals began to pile other stones atop of the girl’s grave site.
“And when they began to move other stones on it, it became a huge heap,” said Powell. “We removed the stones, so the grave yard wouldn’t look so bad. We decided she needed a marker of some kind, so this is what we came up with.”
Powell said when the stones were being removed they looked carefully at each stone to see if there was an inscription identifying the girl’s and  the date of her death. 
“There wasn’t any,” Powell said.
He said two stones used to mark the girl’s grave were intergraded into making the monument. On top of the monument is a metal plaque. The metal plaque reads: “First Grave Riley Cemetery, Unknown Girl. Oral history tells of a family migrating west on the Old Pitt-Jefferson Road, who requested and were granted a site to bury their child. From several historical sources this was the beginning of the Riley Cemetery circa 1950.”
John Finch built the monument which was dedicated Sunday, May 7 after a church service and dinner on the grounds at the County Line Church.
Powell said they decided to erect the monument about a year ago.
Mike Riley said his great-grandfather donated the property for the cemetery. The land was acquired by John Riley St. in 1875, according the Historical Marker at the cemetery. The oldest documented grave is Louise Gillum’s grave dated back to 1959.