Dobyville Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Burnet County, there's a place that outlasted everything else. The town is gone.

The buildings are gone. The roads that once carried people in and out, mostly swallowed up by time. But the cemetery remains.

The Dobyville Cemetery, the last visible remnant of a community called Dobyville, settled back in the 1850s on a white adobe rock hill. That's where the name came from, the location itself, that pale rocky high ground that the early settlers found when they arrived. Dobyville.

It had a ring to it then, and somehow it still does now. The cemetery contains more than two hundred and thirty marked graves. That alone tells you something about how long this place has been at work.

But here's the part that settles heavy on you. Between sixty and seventy of the graves are unmarked, and they are believed to be infants. No names carved in stone.

No dates. Just the ground, and whatever was laid gently into it. You let that sit a moment before you move on.

The earliest documented grave belongs to Mary E. Standefer, born in 1833, gone in 1857. She was the daughter of Hugh and Ana Lawhon, and her grave is the oldest they can point to with certainty.

Early pioneers of the area are buried here. So are former elected officials of local and state government. So are veterans of several wars.

The kind of people who built something out of raw country and then, one by one, were laid to rest in the very soil they had worked. And here is the part that makes Dobyville Cemetery different from just a historic site. It continues to serve the area.

The town may be a memory, but this ground is still doing what it was always meant to do. Some places earn their permanence. This one did.

What the marker says

The Dobyville Cemetery is the last visible renmant of the community of Dobyville, settled in the 1850s, and named for the town's location on a white adobe rock hill. The cemetery contains more than 230 marked graves; between 60 and 70 graves are unmarked and believed to be infants. The earliest documented grave was for Mary E. Standefer (1833-1857), daughter of Hugh and Ana Lawhon. Many of the area's early pioneers are buried here, along with former elected officials of local and state governement, and veterans of several wars. The cemetery continues to serve the area. (1996)