Poston-Odle Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight with a little flavor on the side. Way out in Bosque County, before most folks had even thought about putting down roots in this part of Texas, somebody did exactly that. Back in the 1850s, one of the earliest settlements in the area took hold along a creek called Hog Creek.

Now that's a name that doesn't dress itself up, and neither did the people who built there. They put up a rock building, sturdy and plain, and it pulled double duty as a school and a church. In time, the whole area came to be known as Rock Church on Hog Creek.

Simple name, simple math: you've got a rock church, you're on Hog Creek, there you go. The community grew, the years rolled on, and then came the Civil War and everything that followed in its wake. After that war, the family of John Odle settled here.

And it's John Odle's name that this ground remembers most. In 1875, his sister, Mary Odle Poston, passed away. Grief has a way of shaping the land, and Odle responded by setting aside ground for a cemetery.

That act of loss became an act of lasting care. Over the years, the families buried there read like a roll call of the whole settlement: Odle, Poston, Cutbirth, Pool, Cureton, Adams, Hord, Callan, Hoffman, Le Fever. Names from different households, different stories, all coming to rest in the same quiet earth.

Now here's the part that stops you in your tracks. The old Rock Church itself, eventually, gave way. But its stones didn't just scatter or get hauled off.

Those stones were used to build the cemetery gates. So the same rock walls that once held Sunday sermons and schoolday lessons now stand as the entry to the place where those same families lie. The church didn't disappear.

It just changed what it was guardin'.

What the marker says

One of the earliest settlements in this area was established in the 1850s along Hog Creek. A rock building used for a school and church was erected, and the area became known as Rock Church on Hog Creek. The family of John Odle settled here following the Civil War. Land for this cemetery was set aside by Odle following the death of his sister, Mary Odle Poston, in 1875. Those buried here include members of the Odle, Poston, Cutbirth, Pool, Cureton, Adams, Hord, Callan, Hoffman, and Le Fever families. The cemetery gates were built from the stones of the Old Rock Church. (1989)