Fife Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, out on a stretch of McCulloch County road. Now, every cemetery has a beginning, and this one's got a family name written all the way through it: the Mitchells. Alexander and Isabella Mitchell came to this part of Texas in 1878, bringing their children with them.

Alexander was a surveyor by trade, but out here he farmed and ranched too. That's the kind of man this country made necessary; you wore more than one hat or you didn't last. Alexander died in 1896.

Isabella followed him in 1898. Those two dates, side by side out there in the ground, became the oldest in the whole cemetery. The earliest marks on the earliest stones.

Now, after Isabella passed, it was their daughter (Elizabeth Mitchell Bradley, a widow herself by then) who stayed on and raised her sons right there on her parents' homesite. And in 1900, Elizabeth did something quiet and permanent. She deeded one acre of that land for the family cemetery.

One acre. Enough to hold the people who had built something here, enough to remember them by. Family members and folks from the surrounding area helped maintain the property over the years, and that one family acre grew into something bigger: a burial ground for the whole Fife community.

A place where early settlers and their history could be kept. The story didn't stop with Elizabeth, either. In 1973, a cemetery association organized; neighbors deciding together that this ground was worth protecting, worth tending with some structure behind it.

And then in 1981, the Bradley heirs came back to the table and deeded two more acres, expanding what Elizabeth had started back in 1900. Three acres total. One family.

A surveyor who read the land for a living, a daughter who gave a piece of it back to the dead, and generations of community who made sure none of it was forgotten. The Fife Cemetery doesn't just hold graves. It chronicles early area settlers and their history; and sometimes that's exactly what a single acre, generously given, turns into.

What the marker says

Fife Cemetery Alexander (d. 1896) and Isabella (d. 1898) Mitchell came to this area in 1878 with their children. Alex, a surveyor, farmed and ranched. Daughter Elizabeth Mitchell Bradley, a widow, reared her sons on her parents' homesite and, in 1900, deeded the original one acre for the family cemetery, where her parents' graves bear the earliest dates. Family members and area residents maintained the property, which became a burial ground for the Fife community. A cemetery association organized in 1973, and, in 1981, Bradley heirs deeded two additional acres. The cemetery chronicles early area settlers and their history. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002