The Payne Gap Cemetery was recently featured in the Texas Historical Commission’s Grave Concerns in Texas (February 2026) newsletter. It appears in the “honor roll” of Texas cemeteries earning Historic Texas Cemetery designations since October 2025; the newsletter also has an article highlighting the cemetery’s online presence, which is reproduced on this page.
Payne Gap Cemetery Is Online!
(reproduced from the Texas Historical Commission’s Grave Concerns in Texas (February 2026); article slightly modified from original layout)
We always enjoy hearing from cemetery associations and caretakers on what they’ve been up to since working with us on their HTC designations. Our friends at the Payne Gap Cemetery in Mills County have kept their HTC momentum going by developing an amazing webpage for the cemetery’s history, burial inventory, and ongoing educational programs.
The resting place for residents of the Payne Gap Community dates back to the 1880s, with local families providing communal care of the cemetery for over a century until the tradition was formally adopted in 2021 by the Payne Gap Cemetery Association. Samuel Duncan, association president, began an extensive cataloging project with the goal of providing the most accurate burial inventory for the cemetery.
This has allowed important space for users to add crucial local knowledge of individuals buried in the cemetery—which includes a grave locator map, photographs, obituaries, and familial ties to other burials.
We’re living in a digital age, of course, but its not every day that we see our historic cemeteries fully engage with descendant and volunteer communities online via websites and social media platforms. We hope you’ll join us at the upcoming Real Places conference for our discussion on the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media for Historic Cemeteries.
