Taking The Back Roads

** Originally posted on my website on Apr 9, 2014**

 We have done this and love it.  We have taken a few short trips in and around Wise County, Tarrant County, Erath and Eastland Counties. I volunteer to do photos on Find A Grave.  I like doing that for families who don’t live here in the area.  But I love the drive.  The other day we drove to Desdemona, once know as Hogtown. I have the deed records that my great great grandfather and his brother owned the land where this town now stand back in 1871/1875. He and his brother homesteaded 160 acres each for a period of three years. They had an uncle who also homesteaded there. It was pretty awesome for me to go there and walk on the land they once owned . We talked to an older man who now owns all of the Funderburg land and a lot more that his grandfather bought from the Funderburg brothers and other land owners that had homesteaded. The Desdemona Cemetery is on the land that was part of the Funderburg land.
The town of Desdemona is in the southeastern corner of Eastland County, is one of the oldest extant Texas settlements west of the Brazos River. Sometime around 1857 a group of settlers built a family fort for protection from the Indians on land owned by C. C. Blair. In 1873 the oldest organization of any kind in Eastland County, the Rockdale Baptist Church, was built nearby. Two years later William and Ben Funderburg acquired the old Fort Blair land, and a town began to develop. By 1877 the town had a post office. This town is now a ghost town, There is still the post office and a small cafe. We looked around, visited the old First Baptist Church there. As of 2013 three businesses remain in the town
We have gone to Breckenridge in Eastland County for genealogy research on Funderburg and Schoolcraft family.  We met a Funderburg there who is a fourth cousin to me, he is the Manager at Eastland Chamber of Commerce. We also took a trip to Palo Pinto for marriage records. Went to Stephenville for records.

~Trish~