Nelson Grove Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Nelson Grove Cemetery in Cooke County. It starts with a girl named Mollie Nelson. She was fourteen years old, the daughter of Robert Carroll and Mary Elizabeth Nelson, and in 1875 she died of pneumonia and measles.

Her parents buried her right there on their own property. That's where this story takes root. Two years later, something quiet and deliberate happened.

R. C. Nelson and J.

C. Stockton deeded that land, including the spot where Mollie lay, to the Cooke County judge. The purpose written into that deed was plain and practical: a school, a church, and a burying ground.

Three things a community needs. They put all three of them on one piece of ground. The Nelson Grove School went to work educating neighboring families, and it kept at it all the way until 1924.

When somebody died out in those parts, the schoolhouse itself would host the funeral services. The same building where children learned their letters in the morning could hold a community in grief before the week was out. That's a particular kind of place.

The cemetery kept growin long after the school closed its doors. By the turn of the twenty-first century, more than eight hundred people had been buried there. Eight hundred souls, all the way back to one fourteen-year-old girl and the land her parents could not bring themselves to simply sell.

A cemetery association founded in 1964 took on the work of caring for that ground, and since 1970 they have gathered every year on Memorial Day. Year after year, people showing up to tend to something that started with a family's grief and became a whole community's place. Mollie Nelson has had a lot of company out there in Cooke County.

What the marker says

In 1875 Mollie Nelson, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Carroll and Mary Elizabeth Nelson, died of pneumonia and measles and was buried on her parents' property. Two years later, R C. Nelson and J. C. Stockton deeded land including Mollie's grave site to the Cooke County judge for use as a "school, church and burying ground." The Nelson Grove School provided an education for neighboring families until 1924, and funeral services often were held in the schoolhouse. A cemetery association founded in 1964 cares for the graveyard and has held an annual Memorial Day meeting since 1970. At the turn of the 21st century, there were more than 800 burials in the cemetery. (2000) Historic Texas Cemetery - 2008