Porter Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, in my own words. Now, most cemeteries start with somebody's passing. This one started with a three-year-old girl.

Robert Scott Porter was born in 1795, and by the time Parker County needed its first judge, he was the man they turned to. He'd carved out a life on that Texas land; had a cabin, had family all around him, had the kind of deep roots that take decades to grow. Then in 1867, his granddaughter Syrene E.

Newberry died. She was three years old. And Judge Porter, rather than see her laid to rest just anywhere, dedicated a piece of his own land near that cabin as a family cemetery.

That was the beginning of it. But the ground wasn't done filling. The judge's grandson, Elbert T.

Doss, born in 1847, was buried there by 1869. And then came a loss that no father ought to reckon with: the judge's own daughter Mary, her husband W.G. Light, and their child were killed by Indians.

All three of them. And all three of them were buried in that same plot of dedicated ground. Judge Porter himself lived until 1877.

His wife Nancy Ann, born a Pearce in 1806, outlasted him by nearly a quarter century, dying in 1901. Both of them rest there now. And the last burial recorded in that cemetery was their daughter Elizabeth Jane Doss Upton, born 1826, died 1908.

The marker tells us this site may contain around fifty burials in all. But only twenty-eight of those souls have been identified. Twenty-two of them are just... silence.

Names the ground is keeping to itself. In 1976, descendants of the Porter family came back and restored the cemetery. And in 1978, the marker was placed to make sure the rest of us know what happened here: that a judge set aside this land not for glory or legacy, but because a little girl named Syrene needed a place to sleep, and family just kept following her home.

What the marker says

Robert Scott Porter (1795-1877), first Parker County judge, dedicated this land near his cabin as a family cemetery in 1867 after the death of his 3-year-old granddaughter Syrene E. Newberry. Judge Porter's grandson Elbert T. Doss (1847-1869) and the judge's daughter Mary, her husband, W.G. Light, and child were killed by Indians and buried here. This site may contain about 50 burials, but only 28 are identified. The graves of Judge Porter and his wife Nancy Ann (Pearce) (1806-1901) are here. Their daughter Elizabeth Jane Doss Upton (1826-1908) was the last burial. Porter family descendants restored this cemetery in 1976. (1978)