Fields Store Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's what I know about Fields Store Cemetery. Out in Waller County, there's a piece of ground with a long memory, and this is its story. The cemetery was established during the Reconstruction period, born out of a particular kind of generosity.

Two men gave the land. One was D. H.

Fields, a local merchant, and the community and the cemetery both carry his name to this day. The other was J. W.

Day, a Confederate veteran. Two men, two parcels, one lasting gift. Now, the Reconstruction period was not an easy time to be planting roots in Texas, so the fact that this ground was set aside, marked off, and given over for the dead to rest, that says something about the people who were here and the community they were trying to build.

And build it they did. The settlers came, they stayed, they worked the land, and when their time came, they were laid to rest right here. Their descendants followed them, generation upon generation, until this burial ground became something like a family album written in stone.

Among those buried here are veterans of five wars. Five. The marker doesn't linger on the names of those conflicts, and so neither will I, but five wars means fathers and sons, uncles and cousins, men who went away to places far from Waller County and some of whom came back and some of whom did not.

Today the Fields Store Cemetery Association manages this ground, keeping watch over the land that D. H. Fields and J.

W. Day once decided the community could not do without.

What the marker says

Established during Reconstruction period on land given by D. H. Fields, local merchant for whom community and cemetery were named, and by J. W. Day, Confederate veteran. Burial place of early settlers of area and their descendants, including veterans of 5 wars. Under management of Fields Store Cemetery Association.