Feely Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Feely Cemetery, out here in Culberson County. Now, most cemeteries get their names from a family, and most families earn that kind of permanence through long years of living somewhere. But the Feely name got attached to this piece of ground through grief, and it started early.

The year was 1910, and a man named J.H. Feely buried an infant son in the caliche soil about two hundred fifty yards south of where you're sitting right now. That was the first burial here.

Just one small grave, and already the ground had a weight to it. Feely himself was a grocer by trade, running a store up in the railroad settlement of Plateau, two miles to the north. A man of commerce, a man of community.

And when Culberson County was organized in 1911, the county looked around and decided J.H. Feely was exactly the kind of man they needed keeping order. He became the first sheriff of Culberson County.

Think about that for a moment: first sheriff of a brand new county, carved out of West Texas hardpan, where the rules were still finding their shape. Three years after taking that badge, he was killed in the line of duty. The county buried him in Van Horn, eighteen miles to the west.

Not here, where his son lay. Eighteen miles away. The cemetery that bears his name would go on without him.

More family members followed over the years, and pioneer settlers from the surrounding area, most of them laid to rest in graves that were never marked; names that the desert has since kept to itself. For a long time, all that stood between this burial ground and oblivion was a single metal fence. Unused.

Neglected. Just that fence, holding the line the way a first sheriff might've wanted someone to. Out here in Culberson County, the land takes things back if you let it.

But the graves are still there, two hundred fifty yards south, and now you know whose name they carry, and what it cost him to earn it.

What the marker says

The nearby cemetery (250 yards S) was first used in 1910 for the burial of an infant son of J.H. Feely. The owner of a grocery in the railroad settlement of Plateau (2 miles north), he later served as the first sheriff of Culberson County when it was organized in 1911. Three years later he was killed in the line of duty and was buried in Van Horn (18 miles west). The burial ground here contains mostly unmarked graves of family members and pioneer area settlers. Only a metal fence has protected the site, which was unused and neglected for many years.