Post Oak Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Bell County, there's a quiet patch of ground that outlasted just about everything else connected to it. The church is gone.

The school is gone. The community itself has faded from the map. But the Post Oak Cemetery is still here, and it holds more history than most folks might guess from the road.

This is that story. It starts with a man named Isham McMillin, who acquired land in this part of Bell County in 1855. He was one of those Anglo settlers pushing into frontier territory, and like so many of them, he brought his family into a hard country.

Hard is the right word for it. The oldest marked grave in this cemetery belongs to his daughter Elizabeth, dating from 1857. And here's where you have to slow down and let that settle.

Several other graves, marked by nothing more than piles of stones or markers worn past reading, may actually predate Elizabeth's burial. Whoever those people were, their names are gone now. The stones remain, but the stories don't.

What the cemetery does tell you, plainly and without sentiment, is that a large proportion of the graves belong to infants and children. That's not an accident of record-keeping. That's the frontier doing what frontiers do.

It is a testament, the marker says, to the harshness of frontier life, and you'd be hard pressed to find a more honest monument to that harshness than a graveyard full of small graves. Isham McMillin himself died in 1861 and was laid to rest here among his neighbors and his kin. His daughter Mary, born in 1852, died in 1864, and she's here too.

The Edwards family is here. The Fultons, the Sinclairs, the Ezells. Pioneer families, all of them, putting down roots in Bell County soil in the most permanent way there is.

Now, communities need more than cemeteries to hold together. They need schools and churches. And in 1873, a woman named Sarah McMillin sold two acres of this land to the deacons of Mountain Home Baptist Church, specifically for the purpose of building a church and a schoolhouse.

Mountain Home Baptist Church, in time, came to be called Post Oak Baptist Church. The school took the name too. The community took it as well.

Everything out here became Post Oak. The school ran for decades before consolidating with the Center Lake school district in 1916, and later it folded into the Holland public school system. The church kept its congregation going longer than that.

But in 1952, a fire destroyed the church building, and the congregation disbanded. Just like that, the last institution holding the Post Oak community together was gone. What's left is this cemetery.

The Post Oak Cemetery Association, organized in 1951, cares for it. Burials still take place here. And that, right there, is the thing worth sitting with for a moment.

The church burned. The school consolidated away. The community name faded.

But people are still being brought to this ground, still being added to the company of McMillins and Edwardses and Sinclairs and all the rest. The Post Oak Cemetery stands, as the marker puts it, as a reminder of early Bell County settlement. Some reminders are carved in stone.

Some are just the ground itself, keeping count of everyone who came before.

What the marker says

The only physical remnant of the Post Oak community, this cemetery began as the burial ground for the family of Isham McMillin, who acquired land in this part of Bell County in 1855. The oldest marked grave, that of McMillin's daughter Elizabeth, dates from 1857. Several graves, marked by piles of stones or illegible markers, may predate Elizabeth's burial. A large proportion of graves mark the burial sites of infants and children, testament to the harshness of frontier life as Anglo settlers moved into the area. Buried here are members of a number of pioneer families, including the Edwards, Fulton, Sinclair and Ezell families. Isham McMillin, who died in 1861, is buried here, as is another McMillin daughter, Mary (1852-1864). In 1873, Sarah McMillin sold two acres of land to the deacons of Mountain Home Baptist Church for the purpose of building a church and schoolhouse. The Mountain Home church came to be called Post Oak Baptist Church, as did the school and the community. The school consolidated with the Center Lake school district in 1916 and later became part of the Holland public school system. The Post Oak Baptist Church continued to meet until a 1952 fire destroyed the church building and the congregation disbanded. Burials continue to take place in the graveyard, and the Post Oak Cemetery Association, organized in 1951, cares for the cemetery, which stands as a reminder of early Bell County settlement. (2001)