Edgewood Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing every word straight along to you. Some places earn their history the slow way, one grave at a time, one season at a time, out on ground that nobody thought to make official until the dead had already been gathering there for thirty years. Edgewood Cemetery, out in Dallas County, is exactly that kind of place.

The earliest grave belongs to Lizzie Richardson, a pioneer child, the marker calls her, who died in the summer of 1845. Think about that for a moment. Eighteen forty-five.

Texas had just barely become a state, the ink still damp on the paperwork, and already this little patch of earth was keeping its first quiet secret. Now, the man who looked at that ground and said this is the place; that was Roderick Rawlins, one of the area's first settlers. He chose the site for the cemetery himself.

And then, in 1848, he was buried in it. There is something about that I can't quite shake. A man picks the spot, and the spot picks him right back.

The older section of the cemetery holds another story worth slowing down for. James Lemon, veteran of the American Revolution, mind you, a man who had lived through the founding of the entire country, died on July 4, 1858. The Fourth of July.

Whether that lands as poetic or just plain eerie, I'll leave that to you. But the land itself? None of this was officially set aside as a cemetery until 1877, when it was acquired from Thomas McKee Ellis.

Thirty-two years of burying the dead before anyone made it official. Since then, the Lancaster Cemetery Association has taken over stewardship, bought additional land, and today that ground holds more than fifteen hundred graves. From one pioneer child in the summer of 1845 to fifteen hundred souls and counting, Edgewood Cemetery didn't need a deed to know what it was.

What the marker says

Earliest grave here is that of Lizzie Richardson, a pioneer child who died in the summer of 1845. The site for the cemetery was chosen by Roderick Rawlins, one of the area's first settlers; he was buried here in 1848. Among the graves in the older section is that of James Lemon, veteran of the American Revolution, who died on July 4, 1858. The land was not officially set aside as a cemetery until it was acquired from Thomas McKee Ellis in 1877. Since then the Lancaster Cemetery Association has bought additional land and currently maintains over 1500 graves. Marker Donor: Lancaster Historical Society