Blackburn Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words. Now, some cemeteries hold just the dead. But this one, out here in Bell County, holds something else too.

It holds the whole long arc of a family, a line of Texans who kept answering when their country called, generation after generation. This is the story of Blackburn Cemetery. It starts with John Porter Blackburn, a veteran of the War of 1812 and other military campaigns.

A man who had already seen his share of hard country before he ever set foot in Texas. In 1853, John packed up his family and made the move from Tennessee to Bell County. He was planting roots on land that, in another lifetime, would become part of Fort Hood.

He didn't know that, of course. He just knew this was where he was supposed to be. He didn't get long to enjoy it.

John Porter Blackburn died in 1855, just two years after that move, and his burial was the first in the cemetery that would carry his family's name. The first of many. Because John's sons didn't stop there.

They went on to serve in later wars, and their descendants after them, all the way from the Civil War to World War II. A single family, threading through American conflict across more than a century. Now the estate itself is gone.

What remains, the last remnant of everything John Blackburn built out here, is this cemetery. And it kept receivin' his people right up to the end. The most recent burial was in 2001, when John's great-great-grandson, Wilbur McCorcle, was laid to rest here.

Four generations removed from a man who came up from Tennessee and put down the first stone. That's not just a cemetery. That's a family keeping a promise to one another across a hundred and fifty years of Texas.

What the marker says

Although this cemetery is the last remnant of the Blackburn estate, it gives visitors a glimpse of the history of a long line of Texans who served in many wars and once owned land that now makes up part of fort hood. John Porter Blackburn, veteran of the War of 1812 and other military campaigns, moved with his family from Tennessee to Bell County in 1853. He died in 1855, and his burial was the first of the cemetery. John's sons and descendants would go on to serve in later wars, from the Civil War to World War II. The most recent burial here was of John's great-great-grandson, Wilbur McCorcle, in 2001.