Nelta Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker on Nelta Cemetery out in Hopkins County, so let's let the record speak. December of 1842. Picture it.

A wagon train rolls out of Warrick County, Indiana, and keeps rolling until it reaches a bend of the Sulphur River in northeast Texas. Two Hargrave brothers are out front, leading the way. They stop.

And this is where the story takes root. More families came in the months that followed, and before long two little communities had planted themselves near the Sulphur River, Pleasant Hill and Sulphur Bluff. Now, communities need the living taken care of, and they need the dead taken care of too.

That's the whole arc of what the marker tells. First, the dead. August of 1843, not even a year after that wagon train arrived, William Hargarve lost a son.

That child was laid to rest, and a cemetery began to grow around the site. When the McFall family later donated an acre that included that graveyard, it took on the name McFall Cemetery. Then in 1859, Eldred Glen Hargrave died, and his burial on the family farm started yet another, Hargrave Cemetery.

This stretch of Texas ground was filling up with families, and with memory. Now for the living. In 1878, a man named Greenlief Neely deeded one acre to the Pleasant Hill school trustees.

One acre set aside for a combination schoolhouse and church, open to all denominations. All of them. That detail is in the marker, and it's worth sitting with for a second.

Then in 1882, the Pleasant Hill community got a new name when the Nelta post office opened. Just like that, Pleasant Hill became Nelta. September 1883.

A child named Bertram Oscar Bryant, son of Ruffus and Eva Bryant, Eva being born a Hargrave, was buried on the north side of that Pleasant Hill School and Church. That burial established what we now call Nelta Cemetery. Three cemeteries on this little stretch of Texas, each one started by loss, each one growing into something a community could hold onto.

The story keeps moving. In 1913, the Nelta Cemetery trustees purchased two acres from J. G.

Trent, pulling the original burial areas together under one purpose. When the school relocated, the trustees bought that one acre of school land too. Then in 1920, four more acres came from G.

W. and Lillie Ward. Today, graves lay oriented east to west across an open prairie dotted with oak trees. Marble, granite, concrete, the full range of what people had and what they could afford.

And among those graves are military burials reaching all the way from the U.S.-Mexico War to World War II. The Nelta Cemetery Association still maintains this ground. Active, they call it.

A continuum, the marker says, from pioneer times to the modern day. Two Hargrave brothers led a wagon out of Indiana in December of 1842, and the ground they stopped on is still receiving the people who followed them. That's not nothing.

That's the whole thing.

What the marker says

In December 1842, a wagon train from Warrick County, Indiana arrived near here, led by two Hargrave brothers. Other families arrived in the following months, and the communities of Pleasant Hill and Sulphur Bluff were established near the Sulphur River. In 1878, Greenlief Neely deeded one acre to the Pleasant Hill school trustees for a combination schoolhouse and church open to all denominations. The Pleasant Hill community received a new name when the Nelta post office opened in 1882. The first known area cemetery began with the burial of William Hargarve’s son in August 1843. A community burial ground developed around the site, and when the McFall family later donated an acre including the graveyard, it became known as McFall Cemetery. Eldred Glen Hargrave died in 1859, and his burial on the family farm established Hargrave Cemetery. In September 1883, Bertram Oscar Bryant, son of Ruffus and Eva (Hargrave) Bryant, was buried on the north side of the Pleasant Hill School and Church, thus establishing Nelta cemetery. In 1913, Nelta Cemetery trustees purchased two acres for cemetery purposes from J. G. Trent, encompassing the original burial areas. After the school relocated, trustees sold their one acre of land to the Nelta cemetery. An additional four acres were purchased from G. W. and Lillie Ward in 1920. Graves are oriented east-west in an open prairie dotted with oak trees. Gravestone materials include marble, granite and concrete. There are numerous military burials here, from the U.S.-Mexico War to World War II. The Nelta Cemetery Association maintains this active burial ground, a continuum of the area’s history from pioneer times to the modern day.