Harper's Rest Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's what the marker at Harper's Rest Cemetery has to say, and I'll tell it to you straight. Henry Jackson Harper was born in 1844, and by 1894, fifty years into a life that still had plenty of road left in it, he packed up his family and made the long pull from Tennessee to this part of Texas. He was putting down roots.

What he couldn't have known was that this particular piece of ground would become a resting place before he ever had a chance to call it home in full. See, before any Harper was laid to rest here, a family came through (just passing through, the way travelers do) and their child died. Right there on the Harper farm, in a grove of trees, that child was buried.

And that's how a cemetery begins sometimes. Not with planning. With grief that has nowhere else to go.

Harper opened that ground to them, and the grove became sacred. Then, not long after, it became personal. Henry Mayton, Harper's own grandson, born in 1896, died in 1898.

Two years old. He became the first of the Harper family interred in that grove. After Henry Mayton came others: Harper's children, more grandchildren, the generations accumulating quietly beneath those trees.

Years passed the way years do on a Texas farm; slowly and then all at once. Mary Jane Harper, Henry's wife, died in 1922. He saw to it she was buried there among the family.

And then Henry Jackson Harper himself, born way back in 1844, died in 1928, and was laid to rest right next to Mary Jane. His is the last known burial in Harper's Rest Cemetery. The man who'd carried his family out of Tennessee, who'd given a stranger's child a place in the earth, who'd outlived a grandson and a wife, he ended up exactly where the story was always heading.

Right there in that grove.

What the marker says

Henry Jackson Harper (1844-1928) brought his family to this area from Tennessee in 1894. This cemetery was begun when the child of a family traveling through the area died and was buried in grove of trees on the Harper Farm. Harper's grandson, Henry Mayton (1896-98) was the first family member interred here. Other family burials include those of Harper children and grandchildren. Harper's wife Mary Jane died in 1922, and he was buried next to her in 1928. His is the last known burial in Harpers Rest Cemetery. (1989)