DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Way out in Burleson County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding onto the stories of this part of Texas for well over a century now. The place is called Oaklawn Cemetery, but that wasn't always its name.
It started out as the Somerville and Lyons Cemetery, back in 1900. And the way it came to be is the kind of thing that stops you quiet for a moment before you say another word. A man named J.
W. Lauderdale lost his two-year-old son Charles on November 6th, 1900. And in the face of that grief, Lauderdale purchased the land and established the cemetery there.
That's where it all began. Then in 1913, the name changed to Oaklawn Cemetery, and that's what it's carried ever since. Now, more than two thousand burials rest in that ground.
Two thousand. Let that settle a second. Among them are twenty-two Civil War veterans — men who'd already seen more than most before they ever set foot on this soil.
And there are twenty children buried there who died between 1900 and 1905, which tells you something sobering about what those early years could ask of a family. In 1903, a typhoid fever epidemic swept through, and its victims are there too. Then comes 1963, when the dam at Somerville was constructed, and sixteen people had to be reinterred here from other graveyards — brought home, in a manner of speaking, to rest among strangers who'd become neighbors in the way only the departed can.
The cemetery, all these years on, is still in use. Some places just keep their purpose. Oaklawn is one of them.
What the marker says
Dating to 1900, this graveyard was first called the Somerville and Lyons Cemetery. Land was purchased by J. W. Lauderdale to establish a cemetery upon the death of his two-year-old son Charles on November 6, 1900. The name was changed to Oaklawn Cemetery in 1913. Among the more than 2000 burials are 22 Civil War veterans, 20 children between 1900-1905, and victims of a typhoid fever epidemic in 1903. The construction of the dam at Somerville in 1963 caused 16 people to be reinterred here from other graveyards. The cemetery is still in use. (1996) (Historic Texas Cemetery medallion added 2002)