DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for Naples Cemetery in Morris County tells it this way, and here's my telling of it. Out on the Morris County landscape, there's a place that has been quietly collecting the stories of the people who shaped this corner of Texas — and it starts, as so many things do, with a name carved in stone and a date that reaches back further than most folks expect. The earliest recorded burial on this site was Elizabeth A.
Baker, who died on April 26, 1883. That's the anchor point — the first name the record holds. And she wasn't alone for long.
Later that same year, Pattie D. Baker died in October, and she's among several people reported to have been reinterred here from the local school grounds. Now just sit with that for a moment.
The school grounds. There's a whole untold chapter in that detail alone. For nearly a decade after Elizabeth Baker was laid to rest, the land itself had no formal arrangement.
Then in 1892, a man named J. H. Mathews sold about an acre — including this very site — to trustees of the Belden Public School.
The price? Twelve dollars and fifty cents. The purpose?
Use as a cemetery. For that sum, a place of remembrance was made official. The town was called Belden then, and so naturally the cemetery carried that name too — the Belden Cemetery.
But in 1895, the town of Belden was renamed Naples, and the cemetery was renamed accordingly. A town reinvents itself, and the cemetery follows right along. Names matter out here.
And the names interred within those grounds? They carry some weight. Among them is a Texas state representative.
There's Amanda Sheppard — the mother and grandmother of two United States congressmen. Two. That is a family that left its mark on American law and governance, and the woman at the root of that line rests here in Morris County.
Then there are the members of the Watts family, reinterred from the Wheatville graveyard northeast of Naples, brought in to join the larger community of the remembered. What started as roughly an acre back in 1892 now encompasses two acres. The marker calls Naples Cemetery a chronicle of Morris County, and that's exactly right.
Politicians, pioneers, families relocated from forgotten graveyards, and the very first recorded name — Elizabeth A. Baker — going all the way back to a spring day in 1883. A chronicle doesn't announce itself.
It just keeps accepting the pages, one burial at a time, until one day you realize what you're standing in front of.
What the marker says
The earliest recorded burial on this site was that of Elizabeth A. Baker, who died on April 26, 1883. Pattie D. Baker, who died in October of that year, is one of several people reported to have been reinterred here from the local school grounds. In 1892, J. H. Mathews sold about an acre including this site to trustees of the Belden Public School for $12.50 for use as a cemetery. In 1895 when the town of Belden was renamed Naples, the Belden Cemetery was renamed accordingly. Among those interred here are a Texas state representative, as well as Amanda Sheppard, the mother and grandmother of two U. S. congressmen. Members of the Watts family were reinterred here from the Wheatville graveyard northeast of Naples. Now encompassing two acres, Naples Cemetery is a chronicle of Morris County. (2000) Incise on base: Glenda Brown Scarborough