Haynie Flat Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of the official marker for Haynie Flat Cemetery, out in Burnet County. Now, some places leave a big footprint on the map. Roads named after them, towns that grew up proud and loud and kept on growing.

Haynie Flat was not that kind of place. It was sparsely populated, tucked in near Red Bluff Creek and the Colorado River, riding the line between Burnet and Travis counties. Settled quiet, lived quiet, and today it's mostly gone.

But the cemetery is still there, and that's where the story lives. The earliest graves tell you something hard right away. Two siblings.

Sallie A. Cox, eighteen years old, and her little brother Dennis Cox, seven years old. They died four months apart in 1864.

Four months. That's the kind of grief that doesn't need any dramatizing from me. You just say it, and you let it sit there.

Those two burials tell us people were out here in the 1860s, making a life of some kind along that county line. But the land itself is considered to have been settled in 1879. That same year, Haynie Flat School opened, right there adjacent to the cemetery.

The attendance area reached into both Burnet and Travis counties, which gives you a sense of just how spread out and borderless this little community felt. For decades, the land sat without a formal claim on the books. Maps and land records show nothing official from Burnet County's creation in the 1850s all the way until 1897, when a man named W.W.

Burton patented a 160-acre survey with the General Land Office. And if you want to know where Haynie Flat began, well, an affidavit spelled it out: starting at Turner Crossing on the Pedernales River and running northwest along the road. The cemetery itself doesn't show up by name in the legal record until April of 1939.

That's when the heirs of William Naumann, known as Willie, deeded the property to a man named B.R. Carpenter. The deed carved out exceptions, and one of them reads just like a community putting its foot down: save and except two acres heretofore deeded to trustees of Haynie Flat School, and three acres hereby reserved for a cemetery known as the Haynie Flat Cemetery.

First time those words appear in a deed. First time the place gets named in paper, even though the ground had been holding people since 1864. Native cedar and live oak still grow out there.

The grave markers are granite and marble, the kind that last. Haynie Flat School kept going until 1950, when it consolidated with Spicewood. But the old schoolhouse didn't just fade away.

It kept serving as a community gathering place and an election polling place clear into the 1970s. Then the 1980s came, and residential development rolled through. And when the dust settled, the cemetery was one of the few reminders left that Haynie Flat ever existed at all.

Two children buried four months apart in 1864. A community that never quite made it onto the formal map until 1897. A cemetery that didn't get its own name in a deed until 1939.

And now, the trees and the granite markers standing out there near the Colorado River, holding the whole story. Some places don't leave a big footprint. They just leave a cemetery.

What the marker says

The Haynie Flat community was a sparsely populated settlement established in the 1800s near Red Bluff Creek and the Colorado River along the Burnet-Travis county line. The earliest graves in Haynie Flat Cemetery are for siblings, Sallie A. Cox (age 18) and Dennis Cox (age 7), who died four months apart in 1864. Although these burials indicate some degree of occupation in the 1860s, the land is considered to have been settled in 1879, the same year Haynie Flat School opened. The schoolhouse was adjacent to the cemetery, and the attendance area covered parts of Burnet and Travis counties. Maps and land records document no formal claim on the Haynie Flat community from Burnet County's creation in the 1850s until W.W. Burton patented a 160-acre survey with the General Land Office in 1897. An affidavit described Haynie Flat as beginning "at Turner Crossing on the Pedernales River and running northwest along the road." An April 1939 deed from the heirs of William ("Willie") Naumann to B.R. Carpenter is the first to explicitly mention the cemetery, with a conveyance "save and except two acres heretofore deeded to trustees of Haynie Flat School and three acres hereby reserved for a cemetery known as the Haynie Flat Cemetery." Landscape features include native cedar and live oak trees and primarily granite and marble grave markers. Haynie Flat School consolidated with Spicewood in 1950, and the school building continued to be used as a community gathering place and as an election polling place into the 1970s. Residential development of the area in the 1980s left the cemetery as one of the few reminders of the Haynie Flat community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2018. Haynie Flat Cemetery Established 1864 Historic Texas Cemetery - 2018