Everman Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little room to breathe. Now, before there was an Everman, there was an Enon. Settlement of the area first called Enon began about 1847, back when this part of Tarrant County was just folks putting down roots and hoping the land would hold them.

And hold them it did, for a good long while. Then came 1903, and with it the railroad. And you know how railroads go: they don't come to you, you go to them.

So that's exactly what the townspeople did. They up and relocated to be near the rail line, and while they were at it, they gave their community a new name: Everman, after a railroad official. Just like that, Enon became a memory and Everman became a town.

But here's the thing about this stretch of ground we're talking about. The cemetery has a story that starts even before the town changed its name. Back in 1882, a man named R.E.

Morris established this cemetery when his wife, Rosa (also known as Josie) Vaughn, died on May the sixteenth and was interred right there on the family farm. That's how it began. Not with a grand civic plan, not with a committee vote.

With a husband burying his wife. For years after, folks called it the Morris Graveyard, and that name carried the weight of where it came from. But as more families from the community found their final rest there, the name eventually shifted to reflect what the place had truly become: a cemetery for everyone, not just one family's grief.

The original Morris Graveyard portion still sits in the southwest section, quiet and unchanged, the oldest corner of a story that kept growing. Some places earn their names. Some places outlast them.

This one did both.

What the marker says

Settlement of the area, first called Enon, began about 1847. After the railroad was built in 1903, the townspeople relocated to be near the rail line and renamed their community Everman for a railroad official. This Cemetery was established in 1882 by R.E. Morris, whose wife Rosa (Josie) Vaughn, died on May 16 and was interred on the family farm. Called the Morris Graveyard for many years, the cemetery was eventually renamed to reflect its use as a community burial ground. The original Morris Graveyard portion is in the southwest section of the cemetery. (1994)