Parker County Poor Farm and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Parker County, Texas, and a patch of ground that quietly held some of its most forgotten people. Pull over if you need to.

This one's worth a moment. Back in 1883, Parker County established a farm near this very site. They called it the Poor Farm, and the name didn't mince words.

It was created to house the county's indigent citizens; folks who had nowhere else to turn. Now, life on that farm was not idle. Farm residents worked alongside some county convicts, growing crops, raising livestock, tending the land the way this part of Texas demands.

At one point, the county was housing entire families out here. Whole families. Men, women, children, living in that barracks-style house, making do with what the land and the county could offer.

Time has a way of changing the shape of things, though. By the 1930s, the families were mostly gone, and the residents were mostly elderly. The very old, the very forgotten.

Then the farm closed, and in the 1940s, that barracks-style house was moved to Weatherford. The land went quiet. But there was one thing left that couldn't be moved: a small cemetery, created right here.

It holds one legible marker. Just one. The other grave sites have been marked with bricks.

Simple, humble bricks. The earliest documented burial here is from 1904. The last was in 1937.

Thirty-three years of burials. Ordinary people, at the end of ordinary lives, laid to rest in extraordinary obscurity. The brick markers don't give you names.

They just say: somebody was here. And now, so have you.

What the marker says

Created in 1883, a farm near this site housed the county's indigent citizens. Farm residents and some county convicts worked to grow crops and raise livestock. Although entire families were once housed at the farm, by the 1930s the residents were mostly elderly. Their barracks-style house was moved to Weatherford in the 1940s after the farm was closed. A small cemetery was created here, and contains one legible marker. Additional grave sites have been marked with bricks. The earliest documented burial is from 1904, and the last was in 1937. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986