Nelson Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Parker County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding secrets since before the Civil War, and the story of Nelson Cemetery begins with one man's gift. Hugh Nelson, born in Tennessee in 1821, donated the original two acres of this burial ground.

Two acres. Doesn't sound like much until you start counting what those two acres came to hold. Hugh lived to see a lot of that filling-in himself before he passed in 1884.

But the ground was already at work long before his own time ran out. The earliest dated stone marks the grave of his infant son, also named Hugh, who died in 1864. Think on that for a moment.

A father donates the land, and among the first to rest in it is his own child. The ones who came before that little boy, though, they don't even have proper stones. Earlier burials were marked only with field-stones; unnamed, unnumbered, holding their identities close to the chest.

Then 1884 rolls around, and that year leaves a mark the cemetery couldn't shake. A dysentery epidemic tore through, and a number of children's graves date from that outbreak. The ground that was already a place of grief became something heavier still.

Over the years, folks knew this place by another name: Walnut Creek Cemetery, it was called at one time. But Nelson is the name that stuck, and what a testament it became. The Cruse family.

The Helm family. The Nix, the Osburn, the Parker, the Peden; pioneers all of them, laid to rest in Parker County soil. Over 700 known graves now fill what started as two donated acres from a man out of Tennessee.

Seven hundred souls, and that word known is doing a lot of quiet work, because some of those earliest field-stone markers never gave up their names at all. Hugh Nelson gave the land. The land took everything else from there.

What the marker says

Hugh Nelson (1821-1884), a native of Tennessee, donated the original two acres of this burial ground. The earliest dated stone marks the grave of his infant son Hugh, who died in 1864. Earlier burials were marked only with field-stones. A number of children's graves date from a dysentery epidemic in 1884. Known at one time as Walnut Creek Cemetery, this is the burial place of many area pioneers, including members of the Cruse, Helm, Nix, Osburn, Parker, and Peden families. Nelson Cemetery contains over 700 known graves. (1985)