Blackland Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and it's one worth telling right. In 1882, William and Cassandra Hunt Harvey looked out at the farming community of Blackland and decided to do something that would outlast them both. They donated land, land set aside not for profit, not for themselves, but for the community.

A school. A church. And a cemetery.

Three things that tell you everything about what a settlement needs to take root and hold on. Now, when that new cemetery came into being, it didn't start from scratch. It was combined with something already there: the George V.

Bost family cemetery. And here's the thing about the Bost cemetery: it already held the dead. The oldest marked grave in the whole burial ground dates all the way back to 1879, three years before the Harveys ever signed that land over.

So the ground had already been keeping its quiet vigil before Blackland ever formalized the arrangement. Walk through Blackland Cemetery today and you're walking through layers of time. There are veterans buried there, men who served in military conflicts going all the way back to the Civil War.

There are fraternal markers, the kind that tell you a man belonged to something larger than himself in this life. There's a zinc obelisk standing up among the stones like it has something to prove. And there are the older, vertical stones, weathered, patient, still standing.

Each one a name. Each one a former resident of the Blackland settlement. The community of Blackland may have faded from the map, but out here in Rockwall County, that cemetery remains.

Proof that the Harveys donated more than land. They donated memory.

What the marker says

In 1882, William and Cassandra Hunt Harvey donated land to the farming community of Blackland to be used for a school, church and cemetery. The newly created cemetery was combined with the George V. Bost family cemetery, which contains the burial ground's oldest marked grave, dating to 1879. Blackland Cemetery graves include those of veterans of military conflicts dating to the Civil War and features fraternal markers, a zinc obelisk and older, vertical stones. Today, the cemetery serves as a reminder of former residents of the Blackland settlement. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001