City of Lubbock Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker — so here's the story as the record gives it to me. March of 1892. A delegation of Lubbock residents walks up to a rancher named H.M.

Bandy and asks him for five acres of pasture land. Not for farming, not for a homestead. For a cemetery.

And Bandy said yes. Now, that same month — before the ink was even dry on any agreement, before the ground had really been claimed for its new purpose — it had its first guest. A cowboy from Cochran County named Henry Jenkins.

He hadn't come to Lubbock to stay forever. He was just passing through, staying at a local hotel, when pneumonia caught up with him and didn't let go. Henry Jenkins became the first burial in what would become the City of Lubbock Cemetery.

A few months later, in June of 1892, the first Lubbock resident followed. His name was Joseph R. Coleman.

And over his grave, someone placed a small cross-shaped headstone — the first one ever erected in that cemetery. That stone is no longer in existence today, but the record remembers it. As Lubbock grew, so did the cemetery — and it grew complicated, the way human things do.

At one point it held as many as four separate burial grounds, divided by race, by faith, by economic level. Segregated in death, same as so much of life back then. Various and distinct cemetery associations maintained those separate grounds throughout the twentieth century.

One of them went by the name Los Socios del Sementerio — the Associates of the Cemetery — and they took it upon themselves to see that area migrant workers were provided for and properly buried. That's the kind of quiet, unglamorous dignity that doesn't always make it into the history books, but it made it onto this marker. It wasn't until the late 1960s that the cemetery was integrated.

Today, the City of Lubbock Cemetery holds more than sixty thousand graves. More than sixty thousand. That makes it one of the largest cemeteries in the entire state of Texas.

And those burials represent a broad cross-section of the city's history — cowboys and migrants, residents and strangers, the remembered and the nearly forgotten. Among those interred there is a man the marker lists by his full given name: Charles Hardin Holley. You may know him better as Buddy Holly.

Noted rock and roll musician. Songwriter. Lubbock's own.

It all started with five acres of pasture land and a rancher who said yes. Sixty thousand souls later, that ground is still doing its work.

What the marker says

In March 1892, a delegation of Lubbock residents requested five acres of pasture land from rancher H.M. Bandy for use as a cemetery. That same month, they held the first burial, that of a Cochran County cowboy, Henry Jenkins, who died of pneumonia while staying at a local hotel. The first Lubbock resident buried at the city cemetery was Joseph R. Coleman, who died in June 1892. His small cross-shaped headstone, no longer in existence, was the first erected in the cemetery. The cemetery has held as many as four separate burial grounds, segregated by race, faith and economic level. Records indicate various and distinct cemetery associations maintained these burial grounds throughout the 20th century. One such group, Los Socios del Sementerio, or Associates of the Cemetery, provided for the burial of area migrant workers. The cemetery was integrated in the late 1960s. With more than 60,000 graves, the City of Lubbock Cemetery is one of the largest in Texas. Burials here represent a broad cross-section of the city's history. Among those interred here is the noted rock and roll musician and songwriter Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly). Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002