Cone Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker for Cone Cemetery in Crosby County tells it like this, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Out here on the Texas plains, cemeteries sometimes come before everything else. Before the post office, before the town name, before the county even gets around to buyin' the land.

That's the story of Cone Cemetery. It started on April 17, 1897, with a burial. A man named W.

G. English, father of J. P. and E.

M. English, was laid to rest on land that hadn't even been formally patented yet. That came a few months later, on October 9, 1897, when the state patented that same land to J.

P. English. So the ground received the dead before the paperwork caught up with the living.

Now, the cemetery didn't have the name you know it by, not yet. For a few years it sat quiet on English land, no particular title to speak of. Then, in 1903, a post office got named for a local rancher by the name of Stanton J.

Cone. And the title of the cemetery followed right along after it. Things settled into that name, and life went on, until May 8, 1910, when Judge Pink L.

Parrish bought the cemetery for Crosby County. Official. Permanent.

Belonging to the county and everyone in it. W. G.

English was the first. He went into the ground before there was a name for the place, before the patent was signed, before any of it. And somehow, that feels right.

The land remembers who came first.

What the marker says

Founded with burial, April 17,1897, of W. G. English, Father of J. P. and E. M. English; on land patented by the state to J. P. English, October 9, 1897. Title was adopted after post office was named in 1903 for rancher Stanton J. Cone. Cemetery was bought by Judge Pink L. Parrish for Crosby County, May 8, 1910. 1971