Center City Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Center City Cemetery, out in Mills County. Now, every cemetery has a beginning. A first soul laid to rest, and then another, and that's how a community starts keeping its dead.

Out here, that beginning came in 1874. Two daughters of W.C. and Caroline Hughes, early settlers of this area. Julia M.

Bishop was the adult daughter. M.E. Hughes was the infant.

Two burials, in the same year, from the same family. You don't linger too long on that fact, but you don't look away from it either. Those two graves sat on that ground for decades.

And then, in 1905, a man named Judge L.E. Patterson came along and purchased two and a half acres, the very acres containing the Hughes burials, for use as a community graveyard. Just like that, something private became something shared.

Years passed. The cemetery grew. And as cemeteries do when nobody's minding them close enough, it started showing its age.

So in 1951, concern for its upkeep prompted the establishment of a cemetery committee. Someone had to step up, and someone did. Then came 1967, and a man named J.M.

Dalton made sure the place would last a little longer than he did. His will included a thousand-dollar gift to the cemetery, and that money helped establish a maintenance fund. A parting act of care for a patch of ground he'd never need to visit again.

Today, more than five hundred burials are recorded here, many of them belonging to the earliest settlers of this whole area. Five hundred stories, at minimum. It started with two daughters of one family in 1874, and it grew into the resting place of a community.

That's not nothing. Out here on a Texas road, that's just about everything.

What the marker says

(One half-mile southwest) The Center City Cemetery began with the burials in 1874 of Julia M. Bishop and M.E. Hughes, the adult and infant daughters of W.C. and Caroline Hughes, early settlers of this area. Judge L.E. Patterson purchased 2.5 acres containing the Hughes burials in 1905 for use as a community graveyard. Concern for its upkeep prompted the establishment of a cemetery committee in 1951. A $1000 gift to the cemetery in J.M. Dalton's will in 1967 helped establish a maintenance fund. The more than 500 burials recorded here include those of many of this area's earliest settlers. (1993)