DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about China Spring Cemetery, out there in McLennan County. Now, every community's got its origin story, and China Spring's goes back to about 1870 — settlers putting down roots near a large grove of chinaberry trees and a nearby spring. That combination of shade and water had a way of drawing people in.
For a good while, when folks in the China Spring community passed on, they were laid to rest in family cemeteries — private ground, kept close. But by 1902, local citizens decided the community deserved something bigger, something shared. They formed an association, pooled their intentions, and purchased an initial tract of five acres to establish a proper community burial ground.
Now, keeping a cemetery tidy is no small matter, and somewhere along the way, somebody had what must have seemed like a genuinely inspired idea. Sheep. Just let the sheep graze, trim the grass naturally, everybody wins.
It was an experiment, the marker tells us — and it failed. The sheep began to stray. You can almost picture it: a funeral party arriving to find the flock has wandered off to some neighbor's pasture, and the grass doing whatever it pleased.
Back to the drawing board. But here's the detail that'll stop you cold. Among the many area pioneers buried in that cemetery, there is one grave the marker calls unusual — and that is putting it gently.
Isaac Brock. Born 1787. Died 1909.
The man lived in three centuries. Three. He was alive before the nineteenth century fully got itself going, he was alive when the twentieth century arrived, and somewhere in between, he watched Texas go from Spanish territory to Mexican land to its own republic to a state to a Confederacy and back again.
The marker doesn't elaborate. It doesn't need to. Those two numbers do all the talking.
China Spring Cemetery — five acres of common ground, one failed sheep experiment, and at least one man whose life stretched so long it bent time itself.
What the marker says
The China Spring community was originally settled about 1870. It was named for a large grove of chinaberry trees and nearby spring. Burials were first held in family cemeteries. An association was formed by local citizens in 1902 to establish a community burial ground. They purchased the initial tract of five acres. At one time, sheep were used to keep grass trimmed but the experiment failed when they began to stray. An unsual grave is that of Isaac Brock (1787-1909) who lived in three centuries. Many of the area pioneers are buried here.