Hobbs Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, as best as Duane can carry it to you. Out here in Fisher County, the land was empty in the way only West Texas knows how to be empty, and then, in the early 1880s, the settlers started coming. They moved into this stretch of country and, slowly, a community took shape.

Now, every community needs a name, and that's where a man named Vachel Hobbs Anderson enters the story. Anderson was the postmaster over in Roby, and when the time came to give the new post office its name, he offered up something personal. His middle name.

Hobbs. Just like that, a place had an identity. In the early 1900s, two area residents, Robert and Ann Hayter, donated a piece of land so the growing settlement would have somewhere to lay its people to rest.

A cemetery takes on the weight of a community the moment the first burial happens, and at Hobbs Cemetery, that first burial was for a man who had come a long way from his beginnings. Thomas J. Bone, born in Indiana in 1833, was laid to rest here in 1906.

A long journey from Indiana to a corner of Fisher County, and that corner became sacred ground. Now, the community of Hobbs eventually developed northward, pulling closer to a new school site, the way settlements tend to drift toward wherever the children are learning. But the cemetery didn't move.

It stayed right where Robert and Ann Hayter had given it, holding its ground and holding its history. The community around it shifted and grew and reorganized itself, and the cemetery remained, a quiet marker of where Hobbs began. This marker was part of the Texas Sesquicentennial, commemorating 1836 to 1986, and it was provided by Fannie W.

Albert, Connie H. Tutt, and Lota W. Kennedy.

Three names on the back of a marker, making sure the first name on the stone, and all the ones that followed, wouldn't be forgotten.

What the marker says

Settlers began moving into this area of Fisher County in the early 1880s. The community that developed became known as Hobbs when Roby postmaster Vachel Hobbs Anderson suggested his middle name for the new post office here. In the early 1900s, area residents Robert and Ann Hayter donated land at this site for the cemetery to serve the growing settlement. The first burial was for Indiana native Thomas J. Bone (1833-1906). Hobbs later developed north near a new school site, but Hobbs Cemetery remains as a reminder of the community's early history. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986. Incise on back of marker: Marker Provided By: Fannie W. Albert, Connie H. Tutt, Lota W. Kennedy