Maple Grove Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Rusk County, there's a place called Maple Grove Cemetery, and like so many things that last, it started small. Real small.

In 1879, Paul and Martha Rettig buried their infant son, Joseph, right there on Rettig family land. One tiny grave. Nobody was thinking about a cemetery.

They were just thinking about their boy. But the land remembered. Four years on, in 1883, two children of a tenant farming family named Kinsey were laid to rest near Joseph Rettig's grave.

Two families, side by side in grief. And quietly, without any grand announcement, the place began to draw others. A community burial ground was taking shape, one loss at a time.

By 1895 folks had recognized what they had on their hands, and a cemetery care committee was established to tend to it properly. The Rettig family, that same family whose land it had always been, eventually donated three acres to hold what had grown up around them. Today Maple Grove encompasses those three acres and contains about six hundred graves.

Three generations of some area families rest there. And among them are veterans, men who answered the call across a span of American conflict stretching all the way from the Texas Revolution to World War II. It began with one infant son, one set of grieving parents, one quiet patch of East Texas ground.

What it became is something a whole community built together, one farewell at a time.

What the marker says

This cemetery began with the interment of Paul and Martha Rettig's infant son, Joseph, in 1879 on Rettig family land. In 1883 two children of the tenant farming Kinsey family were buried near Joseph Rettig's grave and the site gradually became a community burial ground. A cemetery care committee was established in 1895. Presently encompassing three acres donated by the Rettig family, the cemetery contains about 600 graves. Buried here are members of three generations of some area families and veterans of wars ranging from the Texas Revolution to World War II.