DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Glendale Cemetery has to say — so let's get into it. Trinity County was created in 1850, and settlers didn't waste much time finding their way out here — by 1854 they were already putting down roots. Slowly, quietly, a community began to take shape near the large antebellum Tullos Plantation.
By 1886, about a hundred souls called this place home. A year later, in 1887, the Glendale Post Office opened its doors, and the town had a name to go with its ambitions. Now, the cemetery tells you things the history books sometimes skip over.
The earliest known graves belong to two children. Ida J. Arnold was just four years old when she died in 1884.
That same year, an infant named Albert Munson came into this world and left it again without ever seeing a second sunrise. Those two little markers are the oldest voices in this ground. The earliest adult grave belongs to a man named H.
W. Threadgill — and Threadgill's story is tangled up with what Glendale was becoming. Because by the year of Threadgill's death — 1899 — Glendale was not the quiet settlement of a hundred people anymore.
Not even close. The J. I.
Cameron Lumber Company had taken hold, and so had the Glendale Orchard Company, and between the two of them they turned a small town into a boomtown of twelve hundred residents. Twelve hundred. That is a transformation that would make any Texan do a double-take.
But boomtowns have a way of reminding you they're on borrowed time. After 1900, local industry began to decline. By 1914, the population had dwindled back down to seventy-five people.
The grand machinery of prosperity had moved on, the way it tends to do. What didn't move on was the cemetery. Area residents kept caring for it — tending to it, honoring it — and it's still out here today, a chronicle of Trinity County history laid out row by row.
From four-year-old Ida to the boomtown that blazed and faded, this ground holds the whole arc. Some stories, it turns out, are better kept in stone than in ink.
What the marker says
Trinity County was created in 1850. Settlers came to this area by 1854. By 1886, a town of about 100 had grown up near the large antebellum Tullos Plantation. In 1887 the Glendale Post Office was established. The earliest known graves in the cemetery are those of four-year-old Ida J. Arnold, who died in 1884, and infant Albert Munson, who was born and died that same year. The earliest adult grave on this site is that of H. W. Threadgill. By 1899, the year of Threadgill's death, Glendale was a boomtown of 1,200 residents due to the success of the J. I. Cameron Lumber Company and the Glendale Orchard Company. Local industry declined after 1900, and by 1914 the population had dwindled to 75. Area residents continued to care for the cemetery, which remains a chronicle of Trinity County history. (2000)