Blum Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Out on the rolling ground near Blum, in Hill County, there sits a cemetery that's been keeping watch over this community for well over a century. The story starts in 1881, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway laid fresh track through the area and the town of Blum took shape right alongside it.

A railroad stop, a new town, and, as tends to happen when people put down roots, a place to lay their dead. The burial ground was established right around that same time, at the very founding of the town. Now, a local landowner by the name of A.

J. Davis, who lived from 1840 to 1912, is said to have gifted the land for this purpose. And he had one particular condition worth noting.

Burial lots would be free. That's the kind of provision that says something about a man. The oldest dated stone in that cemetery belongs to a nine-year-old boy named Robert E.

Lee McCullough, who died in 1882. That's the oldest stone with a date on it. But the marker is careful to point out that earlier burials likely exist, unnamed and undated, resting quietly beneath the Texas soil before anyone thought to carve a year in stone.

Area pioneers are buried there. Local veterans are honored there. Generation after generation of Blum community history, layered into that ground.

And the story doesn't end with the past, either. Descendants of those buried there still support a perpetual care fund and an association dedicated to looking after the site. They tend what time would otherwise take.

That cemetery, the marker says, chronicles the heritage of the Blum community. And it does. One stone at a time, going all the way back to a railroad stop and a landowner who said: no charge.

What the marker says

Blum Cemetery This burial ground was established about the time the town of Blum was formed in 1881 as a stop on the newly laid track of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. A. J. Davis (1840-1912), a local landowner, is said to have gifted the land, specifying that burial lots would be free. The oldest dated stone is that of nine-year-old Robert E. Lee McCullough, who died in 1882, but earlier burials likely exist. Area pioneers and many local veterans are among those honored here. Descendants support a perpetual care fund and an association to oversee the care of this site that chronicles the heritage of the Blum community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001