DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just here to do it justice. There's a cemetery sitting quiet in what is now the City of Dallas, and to understand why it's there, you have to start with a man who came a very long way to put it there. Clement LeTot was born in 1836, in France — old world, old country, old everything — and before he ever set eyes on Texas, he had already survived the Crimean War.
Think about that for a moment. A man walks out of one of the nineteenth century's most brutal conflicts, crosses an ocean, and somehow ends up in northwest Dallas County. He arrived in 1874, and he wasn't just passing through.
He put down roots so deep that by 1881, a whole town bore his name — Letot — established right along the rail line, with Clement as its founder and its leading citizen. Now that is a life with some range to it. But here's where the story turns, the way stories in Texas cemeteries always do.
As was the custom of early pioneers, Clement set aside a plot of his own land for the burial of family. And that ground got its first use too soon. His son Theodore died in 1884.
His son Paul died in 1885. Two sons, two years running, laid into the earth their father had claimed from a new world. Clement LeTot was buried beside them in 1907.
A veteran of the Crimean War, a founder of a Texas town, and in the end, a father sleeping next to his boys. The Letot Cemetery stands now as part of the City of Dallas, and the marker calls it an important part of Dallas County's ethnic heritage. I'd say it's that and then some — it's the whole long arc of one man's life pressed into a piece of ground.
What the marker says
A native of France and a veteran of the Crimean War, Clement LeTot (b. 1836) settled in northwest Dallas County in 1874. He was the founder and leading citizen of the town of Letot, which was established in 1881 along the rail line. As was the custom of early Texas pioneers, Letot set aside a plot of his land for the burial of family members. The first burials here were for his sons Theodore (d. 1884) and Paul (d. 1885). Letot was buried beside his sons in 1907. Now a part of the City of Dallas, the Letot Cemetery represents an important part of Dallas County's ethnic heritage.