Harmony Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker at Harmony Cemetery has to say. Now, picture this. A man named James Norvel Pitts, born over in Perry County, Mississippi, makes his way to Texas sometime in the 1870s.

He gets here first, alone, feeling out the land, deciding this is the place. And then, in 1877, the rest of them come. His wife Laney, whose family name was Odom, and their son James.

And they don't come by themselves. No sir. Families of five Pitts brothers make that journey too, along with other friends from Mississippi, all of them rolling across the country by wagon to find J.N.

Pitts waiting on the other end. That is a picture worth holding in your mind. Wagons loaded with everything a family owns, pointed toward a man's promise that the place was worth it.

Together, these people put down roots and established the community of Harmony. And J.N. Pitts, the man who had come ahead and waited, donated land for a combination church and school building.

One structure, carrying two purposes, which tells you something about what a frontier community has to ask of every plank and every acre. He also donated land for a public cemetery. The oldest marked grave in that cemetery belongs to Ruby Eddings, who died in 1886.

Generation after generation, the families of those buried here kept a tradition, an annual cemetery cleaning day, people coming back to tend the ground where their people lay. In time, the Harmony Cemetery Association formed to carry on that maintenance in a more lasting way. And among those resting in Harmony Cemetery are veterans of military conflicts going all the way back to the Civil War.

A community that started with one man arriving in the 1870s, and grew into something with enough memory and enough roots to honor its dead across more than a century. That's Harmony.

What the marker says

James Norvel Pitts, a native of Perry County, Mississippi, arrived in Texas in the 1870s. In 1877, his wife Laney (Odom), their son James, and families of five Pitts brothers and other friends from Mississippi traveled by wagon to join him in this area. They established the community of Harmony, and J.N. Pitts donated land for a combination church and school building, and a public cemetery. The oldest marked grave is for Ruby Eddings (d. 1886). Families of those buried here traditionally had an annual cemetery cleaning day. Later, Harmony Cemetery Association formed to maintain the burial ground. Among those interred here are veterans of military conflicts dating to the Civil War. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2004