DUANE
Duane's take
The marker at Humboldt Cemetery in Hunt County tells it this way, and I'm passing it straight along to you. The community of Humboldt began to prosper when a caravan of families arrived from Tennessee in 1866. A whole caravan — imagine that procession rolling into Texas, families with everything they owned, ready to put down roots in a place that didn't know their names yet.
They got to work, and Humboldt grew. But the ground, well — the ground was already waiting. The first burial on this site was probably that of Katharine Rankin, an infant daughter of William J. and Mary Rankin, in 1868.
Just two years after those Tennessee families arrived, the cemetery was already open for business, and it was a baby girl who first called it home. The oldest marked grave belongs to Mary Rankin's father, Adam E. Dinsmore, who died in 1876.
And in 1890, the heirs of Adam and Mary Davis Dinsmore deeded this very land as a burial ground — a formal gift of earth to the dead and to every generation that would grieve here after them. Now here's the number that stops you cold. Before 1932, there are thirty-eight marked infants' graves in Humboldt Cemetery.
Thirty-eight. The marker calls that indicative of the hardships of pioneer life, and that's a careful, measured way of saying something almost too heavy to say out loud. Among those graves is one that carries its own particular shadow — Maggie C.
Dinsmore, a teacher, who died during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. A schoolteacher taken by a plague that swept the whole world, laid to rest in a corner of Hunt County. Six of the graves here belong to Civil War veterans, men who survived the war only to meet their end in the ordinary, grinding way most men do — by just finally running out of time.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, when this marker was placed in the year 2000, Humboldt Cemetery covered about four acres. Four acres of Tennessee roots and Texas soil, of infant names and veterans' names, of a teacher who had more lessons left to give. Some ground just holds more history than you'd think it could.
What the marker says
The community of Humboldt began to prosper when a caravan of families arrived from Tennessee in 1866. The first burial on this site probably was that of Katharine Rankin, the infant daughter of William J. and Mary Rankin, in 1868. The oldest marked grave is that of Mary Rankin's father, Adam E. Dinsmore, who died in 1876. The heirs of Adam and Mary (Davis) Dinsmore deeded this land as a burial ground in 1890. The presence of 38 marked infants' graves before 1932 is indicative of the hardships of pioneer life. One of the graves is that of Maggie C. Dinsmore, a teacher who died during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Six graves are those of Civil War veterans. At the dawn of the 21st century, Humboldt Cemetery covers about four acres. (2000)