Personville Cemetery

Established ca. 1861
Lat: 31° 30' 29"N, Lon: 96° 20' 03"W

Submitted by:  Bruce and Linda Jordan
Read: April 2004

Direction: From the intersection of Hwy 164 and FM 39 go west on Hwy 164 towards Groesbeck for 0.2 mile. The cemetery will be visible on your right.

* Marker located in a survey taken in the 1970’s, but not located in the 2004 survey.

See the notes at the bottom of this page.

Submitted by Earlene Blagg Chandler, 6/30/2011
These are her notes taken from the research of Paul and Lillie Click.... research they did decades ago.

"There's little doubt that when Jack (Andrew Jackson Click) died in 1870 he would have been buried in the old Possumville (near Personville) cemetery, which was then a public burial ground. Old George Click died in 1873 and, according to Henry Lawson Click (youngest son of old George Click), "George Click was buried in the Possumville cemetery beside Jack in Limestone County near Centerville." (Personville and Possumville are the same place but 'back then' the oldtimers called it Possumville.) At the time of his memory, Centerville would have been the only town that existed. Over a long period, the old cemetery was neglected and when A.J.'s wife, Mary Ann (Newman) Click, died some 27 years later, she was buried in what became the newer Donie public cemetery, known now as Hewitt Prairie Cemetery. It's important to note that the Possumville cemetery is completely neglected, overgrown with vines and a farmer has even allowed his pigs to root around in it.
Paraphrased from Lillie and Paul Click's book, its location is- - - - - - - While stopping at a little gas station named Oates and Turner near Donie we got directions to the Old Zion Cemetery (where Samuel and Mary Ann (Austin) Newman are buried). An old man asked what names we were looking for. When we told him 'Click' he said he was related to the Clicks someway but couldn't remember how. He asked if we'd looked in the old cemetery for Donie (Hewitt Prairie) and we had never heard of it. So he directed us to go north of Donie one mile. There would be a gate on our left leading us about a half mile to the old Donie cemetery. He said it was PART of the land that A.J. Click used to own and there we found the marker for A.J.'s wife, Mary Ann (Newman) Click! (The old Donie cemetery is identified on the Freestone Co. website as "Hewitt Prairie".) The elderly man in the Turner store near Donie had very carefully told me how to get to the old Possumville cemetery. He directed me to go back west toward Personville and where the highways form a crossroad, in the northwest corner would be the old cemetery. "We sawed that intersection up in little tight circles but found no evidence of a cemetery." We were about to give up but stopped at a nearby house and asked if they could tell us anything and they pointed right across the road on the other side of a culvert. (NOTE: Located on the NW corner, a few yards west, of the intersection of Hwys 39 and 164. Pull up into a driveway and stop at a gate. It's on the right, completely covered up.) We found the old Possumville (Personville) cemetery completely covered and hidden from view by a grove of trees, vines and other growth. The stones we could see looked like a famliy named 'Persons'. That would logically be the family for whom Personville was named. Outside the family plot are quite a few stones. There were two side by side that had inscriptions but we couldn't even make out one word. That cemetery HAD TO BE where old George Click and his son Andrew Jackson Click are buried. It matches the description given by Henry Lawson Click (Andrew's brother and George' youngest son). Note about Henry Lawson, the old gentleman at the store said Henry Lawson Click had owned a sawmill "down that way" and he motioned off to the NW of the store and that the Possumville cemetery had been a public cemetery - - no records kept. He said that later on, someone who bought the land turned some hogs loose in there and they rooted around and uprooted some of the stones, etc. It should be noted that the old Possumville cemetery is in the very eastern edge of Limestone County and the old Donie cemetery is in the very western edge of Freestone County. There's only a few hundred yards between what was our Andrew Jackson Click's land in Freestone County until you're in Limestone County.
On a second trip Lillie and Paul made to the old Possumville cemetery, they described what they saw.... again the Person family graves inside a stone fence. Nearby, there are two to four graves without markers, but enclosed in a low wire fence. These are near the two Allen Graves................. Then there are two, side by side, marked with large stone blocks. These blocks may have been bases and the tops broken off or rooted under by the hogs and covered over. If there were ever inscriptions on them, they have long been worn away. There is no telling how many stones are broken and under the growth, leaves and earth, given the fact that pigs many years ago had to have torn up the place badly...... also given that this was, in the 1870's, the public cemetery for residents of the Donie/Personville area, I've no doubt that if one digs under the dirt one would find more headstones or possibly large enough pieces to be able to identify more people interred here.
(NOTE: What Lillie and Paul Click wrote about as the "old Donie cemetery" described above, is identified on the Limestone County, Texas website as the "Personville Cemetery".)