DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out in Frio County, tucked between Old Laredo Road and Fort Ewell Road, there's a patch of ground that's been holding memory longer than most folks care to count. The Brummett Cemetery — and the story behind it goes back further than the name on the gate.
By 1860, this cemetery was already in use. We know that because a gravestone tells us so. Elijah Ross, aged two.
That's the earliest marker we have, and it's a quiet, heavy thing to reckon with — a child's stone setting the clock on a place that would go on receiving the departed for well over a century. The land sat accessible to the pioneers, which is no accident of geography. Out here, between those two old roads, folks needed a place they could reach.
And reach it they did. Now, the burial ground wasn't formally deeded to the public until September 21, 1889, when Mrs. Kizzie Brummett and her son William Brummett signed it over.
A mother and her son, giving the ground to everyone. Among those already resting there was John T. Brummett — born in 1815, died in 1881 — husband to Kizzie, father to William, the very man whose name the cemetery carries.
Two Brummett daughters are interred there as well. But the Brummetts aren't the only family whose story this ground keeps. Buried here too is James Washington Winters — born 1817, died 1903 — a man the marker calls a noted early Texan and a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto.
San Jacinto. That name still carries weight in Texas, and Winters carried it all his life and then some. He's joined by many Winters descendants, generation after generation finding their way to the same stretch of Frio County earth.
By 1974, the count had reached around 275 graves. Two hundred and seventy-five lives, from a two-year-old named Elijah to a San Jacinto veteran to the quiet and the forgotten and the beloved. That's what a piece of ground becomes when it's given freely to the public — not just a cemetery, but a keeping place for everything a community was.
What the marker says
Between Old Laredo Road and Fort Ewell Road, in a locality accessible to the pioneers, this cemetery was in use by 1860, as shown by gravestone of Elijah Ross, aged two. The burial ground was deeded to the public by Mrs. Kizzie Brummett and her son William Brummett on Sept. 21, 1889. Interments have included John T. Brummett (1815-1881), the husband and father to the donors; two Brummett daughters; noted early Texan James Washington Winters (1817-1903), a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto; also many Winters descendants. There are now (1974) about 275 graves. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006