Ellison Family Graveyard

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it — and it's a story worth hearin'. Way out in Eastland County, before most folks had even thought about settlin' that stretch of Texas, one man showed up first. James Madison Ellison, born in 1840, built himself a cabin near Ellison Springs in 1858.

The first settler in that part of the county. Just him, the land, and whatever the frontier was willin' to throw at him. And the frontier threw plenty.

As a young man, Ellison was serving in a militia company defending frontier homes against hostile Indian attack when he was permanently disabled. Permanently. He carried that with him the rest of his days — and his days were many.

He married Eliza Jane McGough, took up stock farming, and worked that same land for half a century. Half a century of ranching, raising a family, building something out of nothing in a county most people couldn't have found on a map. Now, not long after settling in, Ellison found himself in the business of the dead.

His mother, Nancy Baird Ellison — born in 1818, a native of Georgia, and a midwife who had tended to her pioneer neighbors — died in 1876. Ellison established this cemetery after her passing. He set aside the ground, and from that point on, the plot was always available — not just for family, but for friends and others in need.

And need did come knocking. A family moving west camped on Ellison's land, just passing through, as so many were in those days. A child with them — unknown to history, name unrecorded — died of pneumonia and was buried right here.

A stranger's child, in ground a neighbor opened without hesitation. That tells you something about James Madison Ellison. The family plot filled in over the years, as they do.

His son John. His daughter Lanie. And his younger son J.T. — killed in a fight over a horse.

Twelve family members in all now lie here, among twenty-six graves total. In 1901, Ellison made it official: the land was legally deeded for use as a graveyard. Then 1918 arrived, and the world under Eastland County got a lot more interesting.

Petroleum was discovered in the county. Ellison leased his land for oil exploration, and with that, the chapter he'd lived for sixty years quietly closed. He moved to the Rio Grande Valley with a granddaughter and her family, and bought himself a citrus farm.

A stock farmer turned citrus grower, late in life, somewhere warm and far from the frontier that had once taken so much from him. He died in 1923. And here's the part that lands like a boot on a hardwood floor — after all that, after the oil lease, the citrus farm, the Rio Grande Valley, James Madison Ellison was brought back.

He now lies buried in the very cemetery he established, on the land he settled first, next to the mother whose death began it all. Twenty-six graves in that plot. One of them belongs to the man who dug the first one.

What the marker says

The first settler in this part of Eastland County, James Madison Ellison (1840-1923) built a cabin near Ellison Springs in 1858. He married Eliza Jane McGough and was a stock farmer in this area for half a century. As a young man, he was permanently disabled while serving in a militia company defending frontier homes against hostile Indian attack. Ellison established this cemetery after the death of his mother Nancy Baird Ellison (1818-1876), a native of Georgia and midwife for her pioneer neighbors. Although intended for family burials, the plot has always been available to friends and others in need. An unknown child, from a family who camped on Ellison's land as they moved west, died of pneumonia and was buried here. Ellison's son John, his younger son J.T., killed in a fight over a horse, and his daughter Lanie are among the 12 family members interred here. The cemetery contains 26 graves in all. In 1901 the land was legally deeded for use as a graveyard. In 1918 petroleum was discovered in the county, and Ellison leased his land for oil exploration. He moved to the Rio Grande Valley with a granddaughter and her family, and bought a citrus farm. He died there in 1923 and now lies buried in the family cemetery. (1977)