Black Springs Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Palo Pinto County, about two hundred and twenty yards east of where you're rolling past right now, there's a patch of ground that's been holding secrets and stories since before this part of Texas had much of anything else. It started as the Black Springs Cemetery, laid out to serve the pioneer settlers of the Keechi Valley and a little settlement that went by the name of Black Springs.

Not a grand beginning, but then, most things worth remembering don't start grand. The earliest marked grave belongs to Mary A. Lasater, born in 1841, gone by 1871.

That stone has been standing longer than just about anything else out there, marking time while the world around it kept changing. Now, the land itself, the ground beneath all those graves, was deeded by a man named Silas Adam Sheek. And here's where the story picks up a little weight.

Silas Adam Sheek was the stepfather of Charles Goodnight, the noted Texas cattleman. That name, Goodnight, carries a whole lot of country with it, and the family roots run right down into this quiet cemetery. Sheek's wife, Charlotte Sheek, born in 1810 and passed in 1882, rests here too.

She was Goodnight's mother, and she found her final ground in the same cemetery her husband had the hand in giving to the community. The place kept that name, Black Springs Cemetery, until 1886, when the community chose a new name for itself. The cemetery was renamed right along with it, and from that point on it went by Oran Cemetery.

By then it had gathered quite a company. Civil War veterans, pioneer settlers, early community leaders, generations of the Keechi Valley's earliest people. All of them out there, two hundred and twenty yards east, in a piece of ground that started with one name, grew into another, and never stopped collecting the stories of the people who built this corner of Texas.

What the marker says

(220 yards east) Originally known as the Black Springs Cemetery, the nearby burial ground was established to serve pioneer settlers of the Keechi Valley and the settlement of Black Springs. The earliest marked grave is that of Mary A. Lasater (1841-1871). Land for the cemetery was deeded by Silas Adam Sheek, stepfather of the noted Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight. Renamed Oran Cemetery when a new community name was selected in 1886, it includes the graves of Goodnight's mother Charlotte Sheek (1810-1882), Civil War veterans, pioneer settlers and early community leaders. (1982)