Boydstun Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Donley County, there's a patch of ground that carries a family's name, a family's grief, and a quiet kind of generosity that outlasted nearly everyone involved. Henry S.

Boydstun was born in Illinois in 1858, and by 1890 he had packed up his family and brought them out to this stretch of Texas. That first year, the very year they arrived, Henry and his wife Mary lost their infant son, Eddie. The boy was buried in the southwest corner of the family farm.

Just like that, the land had become something more than farmland. It had become sacred ground. Now, most folks might have kept that corner private, fenced it off, called it family business.

Henry Boydstun did something different. In 1898, he deeded two acres at that site for use as a public burial ground. He gave the land away.

To the community. For the dead. And a community there was.

A small farming settlement had grown up near there, enough people to build a school, enough people to need a post office, which operated from 1891 all the way to 1940, listed in the records under the name Boydston. The post office is gone now. The school is gone.

But the cemetery remains. Here's the part that has a way of staying with you. Henry Boydstun lived until 1942, and his wife Mary lived until 1950.

And when their time came, neither of them was buried on that two acres he had so generously given to strangers and neighbors alike. He and Mary were interred in the nearby town of Groom. The man who made the cemetery possible rests somewhere else.

The land he gave carries his name all the same.

What the marker says

Pioneer area settler Henry S. Boydstun (1858-1942), a native of Illinois, moved his family to this area in 1890. That year, his infant son, Eddie, died and was buried in the southwest corner of the family farm. In 1898, Boydstun deeded two acres at the site for use as a public burial ground. A small farming community that developed near there included a school and, from 1891-1940, a post office (listed as Boydston). Although Boydstun deeded land for the cemetery, he and his wife, Mary (d.1950), were interred in nearby town of Groom. (1988)