Greenbrier Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm tellin' it to you. Back in 1884, Lillis Jane and James C. Colwell made a deed, one acre of land, set aside right here for a community school.

A generous act, the kind that puts down roots. But roots, as any Texan knows, have a way of growing into something nobody planned. Four years after that deed was signed, the Colwells lost their little girl.

Callie Lorena was four years old when she died in 1888. And when she did, part of that school property was set aside for a cemetery. Just like that, the ground took on a new purpose.

A two-room schoolhouse rose up beside the cemetery, standing there from about 1890, children learning their letters right next to the quiet rows of the departed. That schoolhouse held on through the decades, all the way until the 1940s, when Greenbrier began to decline and the building faded into memory. But the cemetery, it stayed.

Today it holds the graves of over two hundred pioneer settlers and their descendants. Civil War veterans rest here. So do veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

Men and women who carried the weight of the hardest chapters this country ever wrote. Since 1939, the Greenbrier Cemetery Association has kept watch over this place. Caring for it, tending it.

All of it started with a deed for a school, and a little girl named Callie Lorena who left too soon.

What the marker says

Lillis Jane and James C. Colwell deeded one acre of land at this site for a community school in 1884. When their four-year-old daughter, Callie Lorena, died in 1888, part of the school property was set aside for a cemetery. A two-room schoolhouse stood beside the cemetery from about 1890 until the 1940s, when Greenbrier began to decline. The cemetery contains the graves of over 200 pioneer settlers and their descendants, as well as veterans of the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War. It has been cared for by the Greenbrier Cemetery Association since 1939.