Elkhart Myrtle Springs Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Out here in Anderson County, there's a piece of ground that's been quietly holding the memory of a community most folks have never heard of. A place called Myrtle Springs.

And this cemetery is just about all that's left of it. Now that right there is worth slowing down for. The primary remaining vestige, the marker says.

Think about that. A whole farming community, with a church and a school nearby, and what endures is the place where they laid their people to rest. That's not nothing.

That's everything. The land itself goes way back. John A.

Box, a settler of the David G. Burnet colony, received this property from the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas in 1835. Eighteen thirty-five.

That is early Texas soil we're talking about, granted under a whole different flag. The community that grew up around here took its name, the marker tells us, from the nearby flowing springs set amid dense myrtle bushes. Springs and myrtle.

You can almost picture it. For generations, families put down roots, farmed the land, built their lives. And when those lives ended, they were carried to this ground.

Now, the cemetery itself was formally deeded to the cemetery association in November of 1927, by E.E. and Ethel Buie. And later, an additional acre came by way of a donation from Emmett Coleman. The marker calls this place a chronicle of community history, and that is not just pretty language.

Early Anderson County settlers are buried here. Veterans. Community leaders.

Their descendants. The oldest dated marker found belongs to Henry Davis, who died in 1903. Henry Davis.

One name among many, but the one the ground chose to remember with the earliest date. A whole community, its church, its school, mostly gone now. But this cemetery is still here, still keeping its long count.

Some places don't need a building standing to tell you they mattered. The dead of Myrtle Springs figured that out a long time ago.

What the marker says

Established with a church and school nearby, this cemetery is the primary remaining vestige of the early farming community known as Myrtle Springs. John A. Box of the David G. Burnet colony and original settler of the property received the land from the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas in 1835. Named for nearby flowing springs amid dense myrtle bushes, it was deeded to the cemetery association by E.E. and Ethel Buie in Nov. 1927 with an additional acre later donated by Emmett Coleman. The cemetery is a chronicle of community history, with many early Anderson County settlers, veterans, community leaders and their descendants buried here. The oldest dated marker found is that of Henry Davis (d. 1903). Historic Texas Cemetery - 2011