Boot Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Boot Hill Cemetery in McMullen County. Now, every town's got a graveyard. But not every graveyard carries a name like Boot Hill, and not every Boot Hill earned it the way this one did.

It began, the marker says, with the grave of a suicide. That's where it started. Before the town had much of anything else, it had this ground, and it had that first soul laid in it under circumstances nobody wanted to say too loud.

From that beginning, the rest of the story wrote itself; one hard year at a time. February of 1869, Dick Gosset was killed in a gunfight at Fort Ewell. Same year, a man named E.

M. Crain, a Confederate veteran, became one of four people taken by cholera. Four in a single year.

That's not a rough patch. That's a reckoning. Then 1870, John Smithwick was murdered. 1872, a man known only as Jim (the marker gives no last name, just a dash where it ought to be) was assassinated from the door of the old Rock Store.

The very next year, 1873, an unknown man was killed in a gun battle while standing in front of that same Rock Store. That building had a way of collecting tragedy around its doorframe. Somewhere in the reckoning of unmarked stones, there's an unknown fella killed unintentionally by a man named Clabe Young while playing a prank.

The marker doesn't dress that up, and neither will I. Then there's S. Glenn Greer.

Born December 7th, 1848. Died November 9th, 1874. He was thrown from a horse.

Twenty-five years old, and the ground out here took him just the same as it took the gunfighters. 1875, an unknown man (described in the marker as a Negro) drowned in the Nueces River. There's another unknown resting here too; the murderer of a man named James Minter. Presumed, the marker says, to have been a member of the Dalton gang.

Presumed. That word's doing a lot of work in a lonely county. 1876, Lige Harrison Jr., just seventeen years old, killed in a hunting accident. 1877, Samuel William McCreery was murdered at his sheep ranch. And then, tucked in among all that violence and hard luck and cholera and drowning and gunfire, there are two more: Pemanio Palacios, and Phelix Wheeler, an infant, both of whom the marker records as dying of natural causes.

In a place like this, that almost sounds like mercy. Boot Hill Cemetery, McMullen County. It began with a grave nobody wanted to dig.

And it kept right on from there.

What the marker says

Began with grave of a suicide. Some occupants are: Dick Gosset, killed in Ft. Ewell gunfight, Feb. 1869. E.M. Crain, Confederate veteran; one of 4 cholera victims, 1869. John Smithwick, murdered, 1870. Jim--, assassinated from door of old Rock Store, 1872. Unknown, killed in gun battle while standing in front of old Rock Store, 1873. Unknown, killed unintentionally by Clabe Young, while playing a prank. S. Glenn Greer (12/7/1848-11/9/1874) thrown from a horse. Unknown, a Negro drowned in the Nueces, 1875. Unknown, murderer of James Minter, presumed to have been a Dalton gang member. Lige Harrison, Jr., killed at age 17 in a hunting accident, 1876. Samuel Wm. McCreery, murdered at his sheep ranch, 1877. Pemanio Palacios and Phelix Wheeler (infant), both died of natural causes. (1964)