Gibson Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way back in 1853, two brothers made their way to Tarrant County. Garrett Gibson and James Gibson, along with a whole cluster of family members, set down roots and carved out 160-acre homesteads apiece in what would grow into a place people came to call the Gibson Community.

Two brothers, two plots of land, one shared dream of makin' something last. And last it did, though not always in the ways you'd hope. Both brothers donated land right here at this site for a cemetery.

When you give land for a cemetery, you're playin' the long game. You're sayin', this place is going to outlive me, and my people, and their people after them. That's a particular kind of faith.

The earliest marked grave belongs to an infant: James Truitt, grandson of Garrett Gibson, gone in 1866. Just a fieldstone, most likely, the way so many of these graves are marked. Seventy-three marked graves total out here, and most of those markers are nothing more than fieldstones pulled from the Texas earth.

Plain. Honest. Unmistakable.

Of those seventy-three, all but two are relatives of the Gibson family. Two strangers among seventy-one kin. This place is almost entirely a family's story, written in stone and silence.

What you're standin' near isn't just a cemetery. The marker says it plain: it's a reminder of one of Tarrant County's earliest settlements. The Gibsons came, they built, they buried their own, and they left this ground behind so you'd know they were here.

That infant's fieldstone from 1866 has been speakin' ever since.

What the marker says

In 1853 Garrett and James Gibson, along with other family members, came to Tarrant County and established 160-acre homesteads in a settlement that came to be known as the Gibson Community. Each brother donated land at this site for use as a cemetery. The earliest marked grave is that of Garrett Gibson's infant grandson, James Truitt (d. 1866). All but two of the seventy-three marked graves, many of which have only fieldstones, are for relatives of the Gibson family. The cemetery now serves as a reminder of one of Tarrant County's earliest settlements. (1983)