DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it — every word straight from the record, with a little road dust blown in for good measure. This is Harrison Cemetery, out in Tarrant County, and it starts, as so many Texas stories do, with a piece of land and the people laid to rest in it. The cemetery — just one acre, not a sprawling place — belonged first to a Tarrant County pioneer by the name of D.C.
Harrison. When it was first used, it was his ground, and the earliest known grave belongs to Mary E. Harrison, who lived from 1864 to 1871.
Seven years. That's a quiet, heavy way to open a burial ground. Several early settlers found their way to this site over the years, and then came a man who would leave his mark on it in a particular way.
R.A. Randol — born 1850, died 1922 — was the operator of Randol Mill. In 1895, he bought this tract of land, and then he did something worth noting: he deeded it forever as a burial ground.
Forever. That's not a lease, that's not a suggestion — that's a man putting it in writing that this place would stay what it already was. About sixty graves are here in all, and the stories folded into that number run deep.
There's the Edward Deason family. There's Randol's first wife, Ronda — she was born a Harrison, Ronda Harrison, 1859 to 1882. And there is Nancy Cannon Harrison, 1833 to 1883, who was Ronda Harrison Randol's mother.
Then there's John C. Randol — R.A.'s own brother — who died in a mill accident in 1894. One year before R.A. bought this ground and deeded it away forever.
You have to wonder if that loss was somewhere in his thinking when he picked up that pen. One acre. About sixty souls.
And a deed that says: forever.
What the marker says
When first used, this one-acre cemetery belonged to Tarrant County pioneer D.C. Harrison. The earliest known grave is that of Mary E. Harrison (1864-71). Several early settlers used this site, including R.A. Randol (1850-1922), the operator of Randol Mill, who bought this tract in 1895 and deeded it forever as a burial ground. Graves here number about sixty and include those of the Edward Deason Family, Randol's first wife Ronda (Harrison) (1859-82), his brother John C. Randol, who died in an 1894 mill accident, and Nancy Cannon Harrison (1833-83), mother of Ronda Harrison Randol. (1982)