Lucy Driggers said she has childhood memories of traveling through pastures on gravel roads to Baccus Cemetery with her family to clean and decorate the cemetery.

“My parents would weed-eat around the tombstones,” Driggers said. “There was a barbed wire fence around it. It was a country cemetery surrounded by nothingness.”

The current 360-degree view includes a large parking garage, retail and restaurants.

“In the '80s, Ross Perot bought all this land around here and began to eventually develop it,” Driggers said.

The backstory


Driggers said her great-great-great-grandfather Henry Cook was 71 years old when he joined a wagon train heading from Illinois to Texas at the lure of Peter’s Colony. He settled in Plano in 1845, and in 1847, he buried his son Daniel Cook, who was 16 years old at the time of his death, on his property.

The cemetery was originally called Cook Cemetery. Henry’s daughter, Rachel Cook Baccus, deeded the burial ground to his heirs in 1878. The cemetery was named in her honor around 1915.

Sorting out details

Over the decades, community members tended to the cemetery.


“My youngest sister was killed in an accident in 1979,” Driggers said. “My parents had kept an interest; my father was a descendent, so they would take care of the cemetery, but after my sister was buried, there they really started taking more care of it.”

In the '80s, Driggers’ parents started noticing stakes being placed near the cemetery.

“It would make my mother angry so ... she’d pull up the stakes, and they’d do their stuff and go home,” Driggers said. “They’d come back a few weeks later, and there would be more stakes.”

After this went on for some time, her mom called Electronic Data Systems and asked to talk to Ross Perot. She was put in touch with Robbie Robinson, who managed the Shops of Legacy development.


“He helped my parents understand that this was going to be a nice development, and we can’t have this cemetery with the barbed wire fence in the middle of it,” Driggers said. “Shops of Legacy put up a really nice fence, and now they maintain the cemetery.”

Marking a milestone

Driggers said her parents became good friends with Robinson. During the development stages, Robinson walked through the cemetery, noted names on tombstones and incorporated them into street names.

“Bishop is my great-grandfather’s last name and my father’s middle name,” she said. “There is a Pearson, my maiden name. There is Libby, my little sister. There’s a Daniel, the first one buried there. There is a Henry Cook. Those names came from this cemetery. I appreciate that he did that.“


Robinson’s ashes are buried at Baccus Cemetery, and there is a Robbie Road that intersects with Bishop Road where the cemetery is located.

Going forward

The cemetery is active; however, only family members of those buried there can be buried there. Driggers and her husband planned for the future and have their tombstones in place.

“It’s a silly thing, I know my family is not there, I know where they are, but we always park there even if we’re going over there to eat and we just wave as we go by recognizing the legacy,” she said. “I have a rich legacy. It’s my family, and I'll be there as well.”