Clarendon Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, and I'm taking this straight from the official inscription, here's the story of the Clarendon Cemetery. Donley County. A bold promontory out on the open land.

And sixteen rods to the west, the first dead of Old Clarendon found their rest. This was the first cemetery of Donley County. Think about what that means for a moment.

Before there were enough living people to make a real town, there were enough gone ones to need a burying ground. That's how raw this country was. That's how early these folks arrived.

The Old Clarendon Colony, planting roots not first in soil turned for crops, but in soil turned for graves. The marker says it plainly, and I think it says it beautifully: white civilization sank its roots here in sadness. Not in triumph, not in fanfare.

In sadness. On this sacred acre, in the quiet of that promontory, grief did something unexpected. It didn't break the survivors.

It steadied them. From those graves, pioneer spirits turned to face the future, the marker says, with greater love for the land and a firmer determination to build for a tomorrow which we know today. That's a line worth sitting with.

A tomorrow which we know today. Somebody in 1938 looked back at those early graves and understood that every hard thing those people endured had become the ground beneath living feet. And so the State of Texas, on the Fourth of July, 1938, raised a stone of imperishable Texas granite on this spot.

Loyally and lovingly dedicated, those are the marker's own words, to the ones of the Old Clarendon Colony who first found rest here, and to the survivors who kept going after them. There's no better day than the Fourth of July to dedicate something to people who bet everything on a future they couldn't see. They lost some of their own on that promontory.

And they built anyway. That's the whole story, right there in the granite.

What the marker says

In this first cemetery of Donley County, sixteen rods west lie the first dead of Old Clarendon. Here white civilization sank its roots in sadness and from the graves in this sacred acre strong pioneer spirits turned to face the future with greater love for the land and a firmer determination to build for a tomorrow which we know today. To those of the Old Clarendon Colony who first found rest on this bold promontory and to their survivors, this stone of imperishable Texas granite is loyally and lovingly dedicated. Erected by the State of Texas, July 4, 1938