DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out in Comanche County, there's a place called Hanson Cemetery — and the story of how it got started is exactly the kind of thing you'd hear told around a fire, slow and sure, with a long pause right before the punchline. Two neighbors, William Hanson and a man named M.
Walton, used to hunt together along Sowell Creek. Now, these were the kind of men who thought ahead. They made a pact — a solemn, only-half-joking pact — that whichever one of them died first would be buried under the oak trees along that creek.
And whatever burial ground grew up around him would carry his name. Well. William Hanson lost that bet.
His worn grave marker out there indicates he died in either 1870 or 1871 — the stone's too weathered to say for certain — and so the land along Sowell Creek became his. Then came the burial of his wife, Martha Dunn Hanson, and just like that, a cemetery had begun to take shape. The Dunn family and the Walton family both put down roots in that old section of the grounds, and the scattered settlers of the surrounding community of Roch kept adding their loved ones to the soil.
Roch itself — that community spread out along homesteads on either side of what became the Comyn Highway, FM 1496, and county roads 434 and 438 — was named after Captain John Bernard Roch, who had one of the earliest homesteads in the area. By 1925, when brothers J. H. and J.
G. Walton, along with J. H.'s wife Annie Warsham Walton, formally granted approximately one acre of land for a community burial ground, the cemetery was already well established.
More than fifty loved ones had already been laid to rest there. The grounds were tended for many years by the Hanson Cemetery Committee, under the chairmanship of J. P.
Thompson — until Thompson himself died in 1941, and it became necessary to form the Hanson Cemetery Association to carry on the work. That association incorporated in 1985. In 1998, a veterans memorial was erected to honor the veterans interred there.
Two men, a handshake, and an oak tree along a creek. That's what it took to start something that's still being cared for today.
What the marker says
When brothers J. H. and J. G. Walton and J. H.'s wife Annie Warsham Walton formally granted approximately one acre of land for a community burial ground in 1925, Hanson Cemetery was already well established. The scattered settlers of the community of Roch had already buried over fifty loved ones at the site. The community of Roch was named after Captain John Bernard Roch, who had one of the earliest homesteads in the area. The Roch community consisted of homesteads scattered along either side of what became the Comyn Highway (FM 1496) and county roads 434 and 438. The earliest burial at the cemetery is that of William Hanson, whose worn grave marker indicates that he died in either 1870 or 1871. Tradition states that William Hanson and M. Walton were neighbors who enjoyed hunting along Sowell Creek. The two men agreed that the man who was the first to die would be buried under oak trees along the creek, and the resulting cemetery would bear his name. The later burial of Hanson's wife, Martha Dunn Hanson, began the Hanson Cemetery. The Dunn family and the Walton family also had significant burial plots in the old section of Hanson Cemetery. The cemetery grounds and grave sites were taken care of for many years by the Hanson Cemetery Committee under the chairmanship of J. P. Thompson. After Thompson's death in 1941, it was necessary to form a Hanson Cemetery Association to continue with the cemetery's upkeep. The association incorporated in 1985. A veterans memorial was erected in 1998 to honor those veterans interred in the cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2008