DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good Texas town has got a cemetery that holds more history than most museums — and the one sitting at Clarksville, up in Red River County, is exactly that kind of place. This burial site was first used in the 1830s, and it started as something personal — a family plot for the family of James Clark, the founder of Clarksville himself, who is interred right there among his own.
Think about that for a second. The man who founded the town ended up in the ground he helped put on the map. But here's what makes it even richer: the earliest grave in that cemetery belongs not to James, but to his father — Benjamin Clark, a veteran of the American Revolution.
The very first person laid to rest there had already lived through the birth of one nation before his son went off to help shape another. That's a lot of history in one family plot. And the Clarks were just the beginning.
Buried in that same ground is Albert Hamilton Latimer, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence — one of the men who put his name on the document that said Texas would stand on its own. Right alongside him lies Col. Charles DeMorse, remembered as a noted Texas journalist.
And then there's the Rev. John Anderson, a pioneer preacher and educator in the area — the kind of man who built communities from the pulpit and the schoolroom both. For many years folks knew this place simply as the Baptist Cemetery, but the name Clarksville Cemetery is the one that stuck.
And whether you're passin' through Red River County or stoppin' deliberate, that cemetery will tell you something the road signs can't — that the town's early settlers and civic leaders didn't just live here. They're still here.
What the marker says
This burial site was first used in the 1830s for the family of James Clark, the founder of Clarksville, who is interred here. The earliest grave is that of his father Benjamin Clark, a veteran of the American Revolution. Other graves include those of Albert Hamilton Latimer, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, the noted Texas journalist Col. Charles DeMorse and the Rev. John Anderson, a pioneer area preacher and educator. Known for many years as the Baptist Cemetery, the Clarksville Cemetery serves as a reminder of the town's early settlers and civic leaders.