DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Desdemona Cemetery has to say — and friend, this one's got layers. By the time the 1870s rolled around, Desdemona was already a well-established frontier community out here in Eastland County. A post office opened in 1877, which tells you folks had put down roots and intended to stay.
Then in 1880, J. S. and Rosa Jones deeded one acre from the D. W.
Funderburgh land survey — set it aside, in their own words, for a public graveyard. One acre of ground, given over to the long rest. Now the earliest marked grave belongs to William E.
Wright, born in 1815 and buried in 1878. But the marker is careful to say it's likely that older, unmarked burials exist among the oak trees here. Native rocks incised with initials or dates — somebody's rough handiwork — mark some of those early graves.
No names carved clean, just initials scratched into stone. You get the feelin' the land remembers more than it's willin' to tell. And what a community lies here.
Pioneer settlers and their descendants. Mrs. Kate — known to her people as Kizzie — Shuler, remembered as a frontier matriarch.
Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Captain A. J.
O'Rear, who served as both a county commissioner and a postmaster. Dr. S.
E. Snodgrass, a physician who gave fifty years of service to this area — fifty years. And then there are many young children, a quiet grief the marker names without flinching.
Now here's where the story takes a turn nobody buried here in 1880 could have anticipated. In 1918 and into 1919, oil discoveries surrounded this cemetery. Flowing wells.
Oil derricks. The boom came right up to the edge of the graves. Joe and Almeda Duke, owners of the site of the first oil gusher, are buried here among the people who witnessed that transformation.
Local citizens who profited from the 1918 oil boom rest here too — though profit and permanence, as this place quietly reminds you, don't always travel together. In 1965, H. H.
Williams' estate donated two more acres to the site, expandin' what J. S. and Rosa Jones started with that original one-acre deed. Today the Desdemona Cemetery Association manages and maintains the ground.
One acre in 1880. Two more in 1965. Oak trees older than memory.
Rocks with initials no one living can read. The marker says the cemetery continues to serve the area as it has for more than a century — and out here under the Eastland County sky, with the ghosts of oil derricks and frontier hardship both in the soil, that's no small thing to say.
What the marker says
The town of Desdemona was a well established frontier community by the 1870s; a post office opened there in 1877. J. S. and Rosa Jones deeded one acre from the D. W. Funderburgh land survey for a "public graveyard" in 1880. The earliest marked grave is that of William E. Wright (1815-1878). It is likely that older unmarked burials exist among the oak trees here. Native rocks incised with initials or dates mark some early graves. Those buried here include pioneer settlers and their descendants; frontier matriarch Mrs. Kate (Kizzie) Shuler; veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II; Capt. A. J. O'Rear, a county commissioner and postmaster; S. E. Snodgrass, a physician who served the area for 50 years; local citizens who profited from the 1918 oil boom; Joe and Almeda Duke, owners of the site of the first oil gusher; and many young children. In 1918-19 oil discoveries surrounded the cemetery with flowing wells and oil derricks. H. H. Williams' estate donated two acres of land in 1965. The Desdemona Cemetery association manages and maintains the site. The cemetery continues to serve the area as it has for more than a century. (1996)