McBryde Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passing it along to you. Out on the Bell County land, there's a piece of ground that holds a family's whole story, and it starts with one man making a journey and ends, as so many stories do, with the quiet keeping of promises. Mancel T.

McBryde was born in 1821, and sometime in the early 1860s he packed up his family and brought them all the way from Georgia to this stretch of Texas. Farmer, rancher, a man who planted things and watched them take root. He had eight children, which is its own kind of legacy right there.

Four of those children married into the Hoover family, so the roots spread out, and the branches tangled together the way family roots tend to do. But the cemetery, the piece of ground we're talking about, that didn't begin until 1885. That was the year Mancel lost his wife, Jane W.

Goar McBryde, born in 1826, gone in 1885. He chose a site south of the family's home to lay her to rest, and in doing so, he began something that would outlast him by a long stretch. He himself was buried there in 1896.

The graves face east, all of them, McBryde descendants and Hoover descendants alike. The oldest family graves are enclosed in stone, standing a little more formal against the open Texas air. And here's the part that lands just right: the McBryde Cemetery is maintained by descendants to this day.

Mancel brought his family here from Georgia, started something in grief, and the people who carry his name are still out there keeping the ground.

What the marker says

Mancel T. McBryde (1821-1896), who brought his family here from Georgia in the early 1860s, began this family cemetery in 1885 upon the death of his wife, Jane W. Goar McBryde (1826-1885). A farmer and rancher, McBryde selected a site south of his family's home on which to bury his wife. The McBrydes had eight children, four of whom married into the Hoover family. McBryde and Hoover descendants are also interred here, the burials facing east. The oldest McBryde family graves are enclosed in stone. The McBryde Cemetery is maintained by descendants. (1986)