DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Out here in Ellis County, there's a fenced piece of ground that carries a weight most folks drive right past without knowing. It's been called the Pauper Cemetery — and that name alone ought to slow you down a little.
This was one of possibly three burial grounds sitting on what used to be the old county farm land, and the people buried here were the ones Ellis County's poor farm called its own. County officials purchased four hundred and fifty acres — between 1893 and 1895 — to create that farm, a place meant for the support and employment of the needy. Now, that's a dignified way of saying: when you had nothing and nowhere else to turn, this was where the county took you in.
The earliest death recorded at the facility was that of Albert Estes, in 1890. The last was Dave Madison, in 1946. Between those two names stretches more than half a century of lives lived at the edges of fortune.
Seventy-three other individuals have their names written in county records — and for a time, iron pipes driven into the ground marked where some of them lay. Iron pipes. Not carved stone, not granite monuments — just iron pipes pushed into the earth.
Some of those are gone now too. The fenced area you see today marks the boundaries of what remains. Not every grave has a name above it.
Not every name has a grave you can find. But the records exist, the ground exists, and this marker exists — making sure that Albert Estes, Dave Madison, and those seventy-three others don't disappear entirely from the story Ellis County tells about itself.
What the marker says
Ellis County Farm Cemetery This fenced area marks the boundaries of what has sometimes been called the Pauper Cemetery, one of possibly three burial grounds on old county farm land that served as the final resting place for some of Ellis County's poor farm residents. County officials purchased 450 acres between 1893 and 1895 to create the farm for the support and employment of the needy. The earliest death recorded at the facility was that of Albert Estes in 1890, the last was Dave Madison in 1946. Iron pipes driven into the ground once identified the graves of some of the other 73 individuals whose names are recorded in county records. Historic Texas Cemetery-2002