DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Way out in Jasper County, East Texas, settlement started rolling into this part of the country back in the 1830s. Folks put down roots, built lives, raised families, and in time, they needed a place to lay their dead to rest.
That place became the Homer Community Cemetery, and it dates to 1865. Now, when a graveyard is your oldest surviving reminder of a whole community, that cemetery carries a lot of weight on its quiet shoulders. The oldest documented grave belongs to Jane Wilson Williams, born in 1823 and laid to rest in 1865.
She is one of ten citizens of the Republic of Texas known to be buried on these grounds. Ten souls who lived under that lone star republic, now resting together in Jasper County soil. And the company she keeps is something to consider.
Veterans of the Texas Revolution are here. Veterans of the Civil War are here. And scattered among them, a number of early Jasper County pioneers who shaped this corner of East Texas before most of the maps were even finished.
The Homer community itself has faded with time, the way so many small Texas settlements do. But this graveyard stands. One of the few physical reminders that Homer ever existed at all, it holds the names and the stories of the people who made East Texas what it became.
Sometimes a cemetery is more than a place of ending. Sometimes it's the last thing still doing the remembering.
What the marker says
Settlement of this area of Jasper County began in the 1830s. This cemetery, which served citizens in the Homer community, dates to 1865. The oldest documented grave is that of Jane Wilson Williams (1823-1865), one of ten citizens of the Republic of Texas known to be buried here. Also interred here are veterans of the Texas Revolution and the Civil War, as well as a number of early Jasper County pioneers. One of the few physical reminders of the Homer community, the graveyard stands as a reflection of pioneer life in East Texas.