Bowman Ridge Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Bowman Ridge Cemetery, out in Erath County. Now settle in, because this one starts with land, and ends with memory, and everything in between is the story of people trying to hold on. It begins with a deed.

February of 1885. A man named A. B.

Keith, the very namesake of the Keith's Branch Community, signed over one acre of land to the Primitive Baptist Church. One acre, set aside for the most permanent of purposes: a burial ground. The earliest known grave belongs to Wilson H.

Benson. He was born in January of 1886, and he was gone that very same November. That's all the marker tells us, and sometimes that's enough.

A life that barely got started, and a community that made sure it was remembered. A decade after Keith's deed, in 1895, a Confederate veteran by the name of J. N.

Hamrick was interred in that same ground. The old cemetery was filling up slowly, quietly, the way small community cemeteries do. And somewhere along the way, the whole area picked up a new name.

Bowman Ridge, for a pioneer named Benjamin Bowman, who gave land for a schoolhouse. Two men, Keith and Bowman, each giving a piece of what they had, and the land holding both their names in different ways. Now here's the part that'll sit with you.

The marker notes that children were buried here before the 20th century even arrived, and calls those graves a testament to the often harsh conditions of pioneer life. No drama needed there. The marker says it plainly, and plain is exactly right.

By the year 2000, there were about sixty graves in that old cemetery, plus another eleven with tombstones too worn to read. Eleven names that the stone gave up trying to carry. The marker closes with this: the cemetery continues as a chronicle of Erath County.

Not a monument. Not a landmark. A chronicle.

Still bein' written, one marker at a time, in a place that started with one acre and a deed signed in February of 1885.

What the marker says

The namesake of Keith's Branch Community, A. B. Keith, deeded one acre of land to the Primitive Baptist Church around this site for use as a burial ground in February 1885. The earliest known grave in the cemetery is that of Wilson H. Benson, who was born in January 1886 and died that November. Confederate veteran J. N. Hamrick was interred here in 1895. In time, the area became known as Bowman Ridge for pioneer Benjamin Bowman who gave land for a schoolhouse. The graves of children buried before the 20th century are a testament to the often harsh conditions of pioneer life. In the year 2000, there were about 60 graves in the old cemetery and an additional 11 with illegible tombstones. The cemetery continues as a chronicle of Erath County. (2000)