Myrtle Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll tell it to you the way it deserves to be told. Out in Ellis County sits a ten-acre stretch of ground called Myrtle Cemetery, and before I'm done you'll understand why a place this quiet carries this much weight. It started in 1875, when a man named W.H.

Parsons deeded the original ten acres at that site for use as a cemetery. Ten acres set aside, the way Texans do, purposeful, plainspoken, no fuss. But here's the thing that stops you in your tracks.

The burial ground was named Myrtle for a child. One child. A single grave that was already included in that tract of land when Parsons made the deed.

Somebody's little one was already there, waiting, and the whole cemetery took her name. You sit with that for a moment. Now.

The names that followed over the years, they are something else entirely. Frederick H. Rankin was born in 1795 and lived until 1874, and he packed a lifetime into those years that most men couldn't match in two.

He was a member of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colony, that original, legendary gathering of settlers, and he was a veteran of the Texas Revolution itself. He's there in Myrtle.

Then there's Katie Daffan, born 1874, died 1951, an author, buried in that same ground. And then there is Jack Lummus. Born 1915.

A Marine Lieutenant. Killed at the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II in 1945. Later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A colony that built a republic, a revolution that won it, a world war that demanded everything, and one small child whose name holds it all together. That's Myrtle Cemetery.

What the marker says

W.H. Parsons deeded the original ten acres at this site in 1875 for use as a cemetery. The burial ground was named "Myrtle" for a child whose single grave was included in the tract of land. Also buried here is Frederick H. Rankin (1795-1874), a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colony and veteran of the Texas Revolution. Other graves include those of author Katie Daffan (1874-1951), and Marine Lieutenant Jack Lummus (1915-1945), who was killed at the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II and later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. (1980)