Leakey Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Real County, there's a piece of ground that holds more history than most folks ever stop to reckon with. The Leakey Cemetery, though it didn't always go by that name.

Originally it was known as the Floral Cemetery, serving an earlier community that carried that same name. And the land itself? Sold by John and Nancy Leakey for one dollar and a cemetery plot.

One dollar. You sit with that a moment. The cemetery dates to at least 1881, and that very first year made sure nobody would forget it.

The oldest documented burials here belong to two people whose stories stop you cold. Sara Catherine McLaurin, born in 1849, and a fifteen-year-old boy named Allen Lease. Both of them were killed on April 19, 1881, in the last Indian raid in the Frio Canyon area.

The last one. A violent end to a violent chapter, and this quiet ground received them first. Then, just eleven days later, April 30, 1881, a Civil War veteran named John Colter Brice was laid to rest here.

Eleven days. This place was barely a graveyard and already it was carrying weight that would take generations to fully understand. The only public cemetery in the Leakey vicinity, it went on to receive many of the area's early settlers: pioneers, children, community leaders, elected officials from both Real and Edwards counties, and veterans.

The gravestones themselves tell the story of what life demanded out here. Measles. Typhoid fever.

Diphtheria. Influenza. Epidemics that moved through families and communities like a cold wind through canyon country, claiming lives that the stones now quietly name.

Today there are over nine hundred documented burials here, and beyond those, a number of unmarked graves. Folks who were here, who mattered, whose names the ground keeps even when the stones don't. And among all of them, the founder of the town of Leakey himself, John Leakey, rests here alongside his wife Nancy.

The same two people who once sold this land for a dollar and a plot. In the end, they took their own place in it. That's the thing about this cemetery.

It started with tragedy, grew through hardship, and it holds the whole arc of a community inside it. One dollar. Nine hundred souls.

And the canyon still standing watch over all of them.

What the marker says

Originally known as the Floral Cemetery and serving an earlier community by that name, this cemetery dates to at least 1881. Land for the graveyard was sold by John and Nancy Leakey for one dollar and a cemetery plot. The oldest documented burials here are those of Sara Catherine McLaurin (b. 1849) and fifteen-year-old Allen Lease, who were killed on April 19, 1881, in the last Indian raid in the Frio Canyon area. The next interment was that of Civil War Veteran John Colter Brice, who died April 30, 1881. The only public cemetery in the Leakey vicinity, this graveyard contains the burials of many of the area's early settlers. Gravestones attest to the hardships of life in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the epidemics of measles, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and influenza which claimed many lives. There are over 900 documented burials here, as well as a number of unmarked graves. Those interred in the Leakey Cemetery include pioneers, children, elected officials of Real and Edwards counties, community leaders and veterans. The founder of the town, John Leakey, and his wife Nancy are both buried here. (1988)