--Photo by Gerald Torrence , 2000

McDearman Family Cemetery

Judsonia, Arkansas

• List updated July 8, 2005
• Legal description: NW,NE, NW, Sect.33, T8N, R6W
• Earliest listed grave: 1879
• Last listed grave:  1938
• Arkansas Archeological Survey site #3WH0619

This cemetery is located due north of the Judsonia water tower, on State Highway 371 approximately 100 yards east of the U.S. Highway 67 overpass.  The names and dates were taken from gravestones by Katherine and Charley Figley of Judsonia January 11, 1980. 

W.E. Leach of the White County Historical Society interviewed two McDearman relatives July 12, 1986, and published his report in the White County Heritage that year.  Two years later, the Heritage published a letter from another relative who provided additional information.  The cemetery was checked by Historical Society member Leroy Blair July 14, 2000.  He reported the cemetery condition as “fair”, noting the grass had recently been mowed “but not close .”  All graves are covered with concrete and there is no indication of unmarked graves.   Several stones were found broken when Gerald Torrence visited the cemetery for the Historical Society in September 2000.  In 2004, Blair prepared a map that shows where each burial is located.  The number (in parenthesis ) beside each name in the list below corresponds to the number in his map.

The cemetery was established in the northeast corner of the front yard of the J.S. McDearman home which was built between 1882 and 1885.  Beside the McDearman graves, the Hanson graves are McDearman daughters and the Perkins grave is that of a granddaughter.  Other family members are buried in Evergreen and Oak Grove cemeteries.

Edna Karnes and Mae Hanson were interviewed for the 1986 article.  They were granddaughters of Mary Hanson and great granddaughters of J.S. and S.J. McDearman .  Laurie Jeanne Graves (R#2, Box 124C, Hughes Springs, TX 75656) wrote the following in response, two years later:  “This story was told to me by my mother, Edna Hanson Karnes… Mother has told me that [John McDearman ] built his house between 1882 – 1885…   As far as she can remember, the only place her Uncle Jim ever worked was the box factory and he walked to work every day, as I am sure a lot of people in Judsonia did…  John S. McDearman was born December 28, 1832, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.  Either as a boy or young man, he went to Henry County, Tennessee, where he married Sarah Jane Travis, born June 10, 1836.  They were married April 2, 1854.  She was the only sister of William B. Travis of the Alamo.  [William Barrett Travis was born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, August 9, 1809, the son of Mark Travis Sr.  The family moved to Conecuh County, Alabama, in 1818 and he left Alabama for Texas in early 1835.  He died March 6, 1836, at the Alamo.]  They had one daughter, Virginia, in Tennessee before moving to Judsonia around 1858-59.  John homesteaded 40 acres of land where the little cemetery was located in the northeast corner of their front yard.  Four more daughters, Mary, Minnie, Emma and Harriet, a son James, a grandson Orlando B. Hanson, and a great granddaughter Edna Hanson, were all born in a double log-house on the farm.  Sarah and John raised their family and Orlando on the farm.  He passed way March 15, 1913, and Sarah continued to live on the farm until 1916 when she, Minnie and Emma went to live in a house in town, across the road from her son James.  His house still sits on the edge of Little Red River, just down from where the Enterprise Box Factory was located.  Sarah McDearman died February 16, 1917.  After her death Minnie and Emma moved into their brother’s house and the farm on the highway was sold.”  

If you have corrections or additions to this list or additional information on this cemetery, contact the White County Historical Society, P.O. Box 537, Searcy, AR 72145.