DUANE
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Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Ramsey Cemetery. Out here in Erath County, there's a burial ground that carries a name earned the old-fashioned way. In 1886, a man named William Ramsey formally deeded the land around several early graves, setting it aside as a cemetery.
That act of paperwork, quiet as it sounds, gave this place its identity. But the ground had already been receiving the dead long before Ramsey signed anything. The oldest legible tombstone is dated 1862, and it bears the name of Rebecca Henning.
Eighteen sixty-two. Whatever was happening in the world that year, somebody out here in Erath County was laying someone to rest and marking the spot. Many of the other burial sites don't have carved stone at all.
Just native rocks pulled from the land itself, set down by hands that knew who lay beneath even if we no longer do. Some of Erath County's first pioneers are buried in Ramsey Cemetery. So are several war veterans.
The families whose pioneers and descendants rest there include the Pattons, the Robertsons, the Lancasters, the Tudors, the Hamptons, the Carrs, the Mitchells, and the Widemans. Names that shaped a county, now kept by quiet ground and fieldstone. This marker was part of the Texas Sesquicentennial commemoration, eighteen thirty-six to nineteen eighty-six.
A hundred and fifty years of Texas, and Ramsey Cemetery had already been holding its share of that story for most of it.
What the marker says
The nearby burial ground is named for William Ramsey, who in 1886 formally deeded the land around several early graves as a cemetery. The oldest legible tombstone, dated 1862, bears the name of Rebecca Henning. Many burial sites are marked only with native stones. Some of Erath County's first pioneers and several war veterans are buried in Ramsey Cemetery. Some of the pioneers and their descendants who are interred there are members of the Patton, Robertson, Lancaster, Tudor, Hampton, Carr, Mitchell, and Wideman families. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.