Purves Live Oak Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just as it was recorded. Now, some cemeteries come with a tidy stack of paperwork, deeds and titles and the whole legal paper trail. Purves Live Oak Cemetery is not that kind of place.

No deed to the cemetery has ever been found. And yet, the surrounding property deeds, they know it's there. They refer to it, a four-acre burial ground sitting quiet in Erath County, acknowledged by the land around it even if nobody ever signed it over proper.

That's Texas for you. The land remembers what the paperwork forgot. The earliest marked burial on this site belongs to an infant born to the Ascue family on July 20, 1880, and died that same day.

Same day it arrived. That little unmarked stretch of a life is where this cemetery's recorded story begins, and there is a weight to that you don't have to reach for. It just sits there.

The community itself carries the name Purves, and two men behind that name are worth mentioning. John Purves founded a church in the area in 1890, and William M. Purves became the town's first postmaster in 1897.

Two men, one name, two different ways of knitting a community together, one through faith and one through the mail. The families who came to settle here, and who came eventually to rest here, read like a roll call of the frontier. The Ascues, the Bruners, the Cases, the Curriers, the Daniels, the Harrises, the McCurdys, the McGees, the Munches, the Rasmussens, the Stephenses, the Tatums, the Turnbows, and the Whisenants.

Pioneers, every one of them. By 1999, this ground held three hundred and fifty-nine graves. And the marker notes something worth sitting with: the cemetery continues to serve the community of Purves and the surrounding vicinity as a burial ground and a chronicle of history.

A chronicle of history. That's not just a pretty phrase. It means every stone out there is a sentence, and together they tell a story that starts with one infant on a July day in 1880, and keeps right on going.

What the marker says

The earliest marked burial on this site is that of an infant who was born to the Ascue family on July 20, 1880, and died the same day. Though no deed to the cemetery has been found, deeds to the surrounding property refer to the four-acre burial ground. The Purves community was named for John Purves, who founded a church in the area in 1890, and William M. Purves, who became the town's first postmaster in 1897. Among the pioneers represented here are members of the Ascue, Bruner, Case, Currier, Daniel, Harris, McCurdy, McGee, Munch, Rasmussen, Stephens, Tatum, Turnbow and Whisenant families. With 359 graves in 1999, the cemetery continues to serve the community of Purves and the surrounding vicinity as a burial ground and a chronicle of history. (2000)