Kress Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Kress Cemetery, out there in Swisher County. Now, every community has a place where the story eventually comes to rest. A place that holds the names of the ones who came first, who broke ground and built something out of nothing.

In Kress, that place has been the cemetery on the edge of town, and it's been there since 1907. The story starts a little ways back, with a town called Wright. When a railway was built in this area, the residents of Wright didn't sit still and watch the future roll past them.

They moved. They followed those tracks, settled in around Kress, and they got to work building a community from the ground up. And when you're building a community, one of the first things you reckon with, whether you want to or not, is that you're going to need a place to bury your dead.

A man named F.T. Skipworth, who served as president of Farmers State Bank, deeded the land for exactly that purpose. He gave the ground so that the community would have a place to keep its memories.

The oldest known grave belongs to Mary F. McMillam, and it dates to 1910. That name, carved into stone, is the earliest marker of the markers, so to speak.

The oldest testament to a life lived in this corner of the Texas Panhandle. From that point on, Kress filled those grounds with its own. Bankers.

Real estate agents. Ranchers. Farmers.

The people who ran the accounts and worked the land and traded the lots and herded the cattle that made this town what it was. Community leaders, the marker calls them, and it's hard to argue with that. Leaders tend to look a lot like ordinary people when you finally get to read their names on stone.

In 1945, the Kress Cemetery Association was incorporated, giving the place an official steward, an organization with the express purpose of keeping it tended and true. And it has done exactly that. The cemetery continues to serve Kress to this day.

The marker calls it a reminder of the pioneering men and women of this community. And that's exactly right. Every town out here on the high plains is built on a kind of faith, the faith that what you plant in this hard, flat, wind-scoured earth will take root and last.

The Kress Cemetery is proof that some of it did.

What the marker says

This cemetery has served the community of Kress since 1907, shortly after residents of the town of Wright moved to this area when a railway was built here. F.T. Skipworth, a president of Farmers State Bank, deeded the land for cemetery use. The oldest known grave in the cemetery, that of Mary F. McMillam, dates to 1910. Since that time, many community leaders and residents of Kress, including bankers, real estate agents, ranchers and farmers, have been buried here. The Kress Cemetery Association, incorporated in 1945, maintains the cemetery, which continues to serve Kress and is a reminder of the pioneering men and women of this community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006