DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Bluffton Cemetery has to say — and friend, this one's got layers. Picture Llano County, sometime around 1930. The Emery, Peck and Rockwood Development Company has just purchased a piece of land, and they've already decided what's coming next: Lake Buchanan.
A whole lake. So before the water rises, they donate that site to the Bluffton Cemetery Association — and they throw in something else besides. The red sandstone for the cemetery's fence, its portico, its well structure.
They're building a place to receive what the lake is about to swallow. Because here's the thing about damming a river in country where people have been livin' and dyin' since the mid-1860s. There are graves out there.
A lot of them. The Old Bluffton Cemetery. The Chestnut Cemetery.
The Holland, Maxwell, O'Donnell, and Olney Cemeteries. And a few graves from below White Bluff. All of them standing in the water's path.
So in three stages — 1931, then 1936, then 1937 — they said all the graves in that path were relocated. Moved stone by stone, memory by memory, to this higher ground. Stones dating as far back as the mid-1860s made the journey.
Some 59 burials were not identified. Fifty-nine souls carried here without a name to follow them. That's a weight this cemetery has carried ever since.
Now. Among the first interments here that was not a reburial — not a moved grave, but a fresh one — was a man named Isaac "Ike" Byler Maxwell. Born 1837, died 1931.
And that name, Maxwell, you may have noticed it on the list of relocated cemeteries. This was that kind of country, where a man's name ran deep enough to mark the land itself. Ike Maxwell had named the Bluffton Community back in 1854.
He'd served as a state legislator, and in that role he influenced the choice to use native granite for the construction of the state capitol. He served in varied roles in state and local public service. And he was a Disciples of Christ minister.
The man named the town. He shaped the capitol. He preached the gospel.
And when he died in 1931 — the very year the lake's preparation began — he became one of the first new souls laid to rest in the very cemetery built to hold everything the rising water couldn't keep. This site has been cared for by an association since the 1930s. The marker calls it a chronicle of the rich heritage of the Bluffton area.
I'd call it something a little more than that. It's what a community does when the world changes around it — it gathers its dead, tends the ground, and holds on.
What the marker says
Bluffton Cemetery This site was purchased in 1930 by the Emery, Peck and Rockwood Development Company and donated to the Bluffton Cemetery Association in anticipation of the company's construction of what would become Lake Buchanan. They provided the red sandstone for the cemetery's fence, portico and well structure. A number of local cemeteries were relocated here to make way for the dam. Stones that date from as early as the mid-1860s mark burials that were original to the Old Bluffton Cemetery, as well as the Chestnut, Holland, Maxwell, O'Donnell and Olney Cemeteries, and a few graves from below White Bluff. Some 59 burials were not identified, but all graves in the water's path were said to have been relocated in three stages in 1931, 1936 and 1937. One of the first interments here that was not a reburial took place upon the death of Isaac "Ike" Byler Maxwell (1837-1931), who had named the Bluffton Community back in 1854. As a state legislator, he influenced the choice to use native granite for the construction of the state capitol. In addition to varied roles in state and local public service, he was a Disciples of Christ minister. This site, cared for by an association since the 1930s, chronicles the rich heritage of the Bluffton area. Historic Texas Cemetery-2001