Colfax Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along as best I can. Way out in Van Zandt County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding this community's stories for a long, long time. Five acres of it, to be exact.

Back in 1883, a man named A. L. Kellam donated those five acres, and that gift helped establish what we now know as Colfax Cemetery.

Just one year later, in 1884, the ground received its first burial. And the marker makes sure you know who that was. Elisha Tunnell.

Founder of Tunnell's Chapel, the rural community that would later become known as Colfax. The man who gave the place its first name was the first one laid to rest in its most permanent ground. You sit with that for a moment.

Now, a cemetery is rarely just a cemetery out here in rural Texas, and Colfax is no exception. The land included with the burial ground has been occupied by three school buildings and two local churches over the years. Three schools.

Two churches. And it was often the site of revivals and summer camp meetings, the kind of gatherings where communities come together, sing loud, and remind themselves who they are. About a thousand graves now rest in Colfax Cemetery.

A thousand. Pioneers and their descendants, the marker says. Generation after generation, folded back into the same five acres that A.

L. Kellam gave over one hundred years before this marker was ever set in place. Some ground just holds more than dirt.

What the marker says

In 1883, A. L. Kellam donated five acres of land that helped establish this cemetery. The first burial, which took place in 1884, was that of Elisha Tunnell, founder of Tunnell's Chapel, the rural community which later became known as Colfax. Land included with the burial ground has been occupied by three school buildings and two local churches, and was often the site of revivals and summer camp meetings. Colfax Cemetery which contains about 1,000 graves is the resting place of many of the area's pioneers and their descendants. (1983)