Eakins Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it: and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most cemeteries out here in Denton County got their start the way a lot of things on the frontier got their start; with loss that nobody planned for and a community that had no choice but to hold together afterward. Noah and Susan Eakins brought their family to this part of Denton County from Kentucky in 1855.

Noah, born in 1810, Susan in 1816, they weren't young pioneers exactly, but they were determined ones. They settled their land, and for a little while, that's all it was: their land. Then came the moment that changed everything.

A neighbor, Angelina Rayburn, was fatally burned while cooking on an open fire. Out here, an open fire wasn't a luxury or a novelty. It was breakfast.

It was survival. And sometimes, in a heartbeat, it was tragedy. The marker doesn't dress it up, and neither will I.

Angelina Rayburn died. And the Eakins family set aside a piece of their land, right around 1855 to 1858, to give her somewhere to rest. That's how a family plot becomes something more.

By 1861, another family had cause to visit that quiet ground. An infant, Lula Q. Porter, child of another pioneer family, was buried there.

And with that, the place stopped being the Eakins' private grief and became something the whole community claimed: Eakins Cemetery. The Eakins family themselves are buried there; Noah, Susan, their kin. So are many of the other pioneers who carved their lives out of this corner of Denton County, and the descendants who carried those lives forward.

And here's the thing that gets me every time I pass a marker like this one: this cemetery is still serving that rural community today. What started with a neighbor's tragedy on an open fire, out on land that a Kentucky family had only just begun to call home, is still doing its quiet, steady work more than a century and a half later. Some things out here just endure.

What the marker says

Noah (1810-1868) and Susan (1816-1878) Eakins and their family came to this part of Denton County from Kentucky in 1855. This cemetery was established on their land about 1855-58 when a neighbor, Angelina Rayburn, was fatally burned while cooking on an open fire. Lula Q. Porter, infant child of another pioneer family, was buried in the graveyard in 1861, and the site became a community burial ground known as Eakins Cemetery. It is the final resting place of the Eakins family and many other area pioneers and their descendants. It continues to serve the rural community. (1995)