Locklin Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Now, out here in Milam County, the ground has a long memory. And this particular patch of ground, the one we call Locklin Cemetery, its story starts even before Texas was Texas.

Back in 1835, a woman named Abigale McLennan Fokes acquired a Mexican land grant right here. That's worth sitting with for a moment. A land grant, under Mexican authority, on what would become some of the most storied soil in the Republic of Texas.

Abigale Fokes had her name on it. Then, in the early 1840s, a man named Peter M. Mercer set up a blacksmith shop in this area.

You can almost hear it, the hammer ringing out across the open country, sparks flying, horses waiting in line. Mercer was here, working the land and the iron. But 1844 came, and Peter M.

Mercer was the first person recorded as buried in this cemetery. The first. That blacksmith shop, that ringing hammer, went quiet.

And it was Abigale Fokes herself who later set aside this site for cemetery purposes. She gave the ground over to something larger than any one person. The cemetery is believed to be named for the extended family of William Lawson Locklin, an early settler of this area.

Believed to be. Sometimes history hands you a name and asks you to take it on faith, and out here, folks did. Today, Locklin Cemetery holds about four hundred burials.

Four hundred souls. Among them, frontier settlers and their descendants, and veterans of the Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas Army, people who built and fought for something from nothing. And here's the part that catches you quiet: it continues to serve the area.

Not past tense. Not a relic. Still doing what Abigale Fokes set it aside to do, all those years ago.

Some ground just keeps its promises.

What the marker says

Abigale McLennan Fokes acquired a Mexican land grant here in 1835. Peter M. Mercer established a blacksmith shop in this area in the early 1840s. His burial in 1844 is the first recorded in this cemetery. Fokes later set aside this site for cemetery purposes. The cemetery is believed to be named for the extended family of early area settler William Lawson Locklin. It presently contains about 400 burials including many of this area's frontier settlers and their descendants and veterans of the Texas revolution and Republic of Texas Army. It continues to serve the area. (1994)