Tending to the legacy

A look at the couple who tend to historic Baccus Cemetery, a tangible piece of our area's legacy that's right in our midst.

You've probably driven past it and wondered, "What's a cemetery doing in the middle of a master planned development?" Well, here's the answer.

Baccus Cemetery, located on Bishop Road in Legacy Town Center, is a valuable and irreplaceable part of our area's heritage. Buried there is Henry Cook, one of Collin County's early settlers. And if you glance over into the cemetery grounds, on some days you might well spot Charles Bishop Pearson (Henry Cook's great-great-grandson), and his wife, Anne Kennedy Pearson.

Charles and Anne maintained the cemetery for many years until the Legacy Association took over the maintenance in the 1980’s.  In 1979, their youngest daughter, Libby Louise, was buried there. Today, there are two intersecting streets in Legacy Town Center named in her honor, Libby and Pearson.  Six generations of Henry Cook's descendants are buried there along with other early Plano settlers, as will Charles and Anne.

Henry Cook was a War of 1812 veteran who settled in what is now the Legacy area in 1846. "He settled two plots of land," said Charles. "One had good black soil for growing crops, the other (where Frito Lay is today) was rocky but had a spring and timber." In those days, water and wood were two indispensable commodities.

When the time came to establish a family cemetery, Henry Cook chose the high spot on his property. In time, his daughter Rachel who married a Baccus,  acquired the land, and in 1878 she deeded it to the heirs of Henry Cook for church and cemetery purposes.  Years later, the cemetery association honored Rachel by naming the cemetery after her.

Henry's great-great-grandson, Charles Pearson, says he "didn't inherit any land" that had once belonged to his illustrious ancestor. Instead, after returning from service in World War II, he became a "sharecropper," as he puts it, renting a section of the fertile farm land (and the farm house) from his grandfather, who wanted to retire from farming. "Our four children were born there, in the same house where my mother and grandmother were born," says Charles. The house stood near where the intersection of Tennyson and the Tollway is today.

Baccus Cemetery will remain a prominent feature of the Legacy community, even as development springs up around it. In fact, a beautiful new fence of iron with stone columns is now being constructed around the cemetery's perimeter.