Bullock 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 Eastland County, a story starts the way so many Texas stories do: with land, with loss, and with a community deciding to put down roots whether the ground cooperates or not. It begins in 1878, when a baby girl named Georgia A.

Barnes was laid to rest on William Nolen's land. There was already a one-room schoolhouse on that very site. So from the beginning, this place held both the living and the gone.

Six years later, in 1884, a three-year-old girl was buried there too. You sit with that a moment. Two children.

Six years apart. And the community kept coming back. In 1886, William Nolen did something that speaks to a certain kind of Texas generosity.

He donated two acres out of his 160 for the formal establishment of a school and a cemetery, side by side, for the area that would come to be known as the Bullock community. School on one side, the departed on the other. Life and memory, sharing the same donated ground.

Now, here's where the story takes one of those turns that makes you shake your head. In 1918, somebody looked at that cemetery and school property and thought: oil. The land was leased for drilling.

You can almost hear the derrick going up, the hopeful chatter, the speculating. The well did not produce. Not a drop worth mentioning.

The ground had given plenty to this community already, and apparently it wasn't giving that. More land was donated over the years as the need arose, including the site of that old dry well. Then in the 1960s, the Bullock Cemetery Association was formed, putting an organized hand on something the community had been tending by instinct for the better part of a century.

And today, Bullock Cemetery continues to serve the area. Started with a baby girl in 1878, tested by drilling rigs in 1918, and still going. That's the Bullock community for you.

What the marker says

When baby Georgia A. Barnes was interred on William Nolen's land in 1878, there was a one-room schoolhouse on this site. A three-year-old girl was buried here in 1884, and in 1886 William Nolen donated two of his 160 acres for the formal establishment of a school and cemetery for the area later known as the Bullock community. In 1918 the cemetery and school property were leased for drilling, but the resulting well did not produce. More land was donated as needed, including the site of the old oil well. The Bullock Cemetery Association was formed in the 1960s. Bullock Cemetery continues to serve the area. (1998)