Cross Plains Cemetery

Duane's take

The marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Out near the edge of Cross Plains, on a flat stretch of Callahan County ground, sits a cemetery that holds more of this town's story than most history books ever will. Let me walk you through it.

The land itself goes back a long way. Originally, it was granted to a man named James Knight, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists, given to him for his service in the Mexican-American War.

Think about that for a second. This ground was tied to some of the earliest threads of Texas history before the first shovel of cemetery dirt was ever turned. After Knight, the land passed through the hands of several absentee landowners, people who owned it but never really knew it.

The ground just sat there, waiting. Then came 1882. The first burial was the son of a man the town knew as Uncle Johnnie Lard, also recorded as Laird, and that moment changed what this place was.

It was no longer just land on the edge of town. It was something else entirely. Years went by.

The cemetery grew in the quiet way cemeteries do. Then in 1905, Thomas F. Steele and his sister, Annie Parsons Steele Eager, made it official.

They deeded the land to cemetery trustees, and from that point forward, Cross Plains had a proper place to keep its dead. And what a company of people came to rest here. Military veterans.

Members of fraternal organizations. All of the original cemetery trustees themselves. And John A.

Wagner, the very first mayor Cross Plains ever had. The key leaders. The founding families.

The ones who built the town and the ones who buried the ones who built the town. Out there on that flat piece of ground near the edge of things, they're all still neighbors.

What the marker says

Situated on a flat area near the edge of town, the Cross Plains Cemetery is the final resting place for the town's key leaders and families. The land, originally granted to James Knight, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists, for service in the Mexican-American War, passed to several absentee landowners. The first burial was the son of Uncle Johnnie Lard (Laird) in 1882. In 1905, Thomas F. Steele and his sister, Annie Parsons (Steele) Eager, deeded the land to cemetery trustees. Many military veterans are buried here, along with all of the original cemetery trustees, Cross Plains" first mayor, John A. Wagner, and members of numerous fraternal organizations.