Ranger Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Ranger Cemetery — and it's one worth slowing down for. Now, every graveyard has a beginning, and this one's beginning is as dramatic as Texas gets. The oldest known grave here belongs to Major H.

Oram Watts. He was the customs collector at Linnville — that nearby settlement — and on August 8, 1840, a Comanche raid made him a casualty of that attack. That's where this ground first received the dead.

Before it had a name, before it had a story people would tell, it had Major Watts. But the name — Ranger Cemetery — that came a decade later. In 1850, a woman named Margaret Peyton Lytle was buried here.

She was the wife of James T. Lytle, who died in 1854, and James T. Lytle carried a title that'd raise an eyebrow at any campfire: he was known as the poet of the Texas Rangers.

That's what the marker calls him, and that little set of quotation marks the marker puts around the word poet tells you there's a whole conversation hiding in there that history didn't fully record. But his connection to this place gave it its name, and the name held. Then the Civil War came — 1861 to 1865 — and brought with it something that battlefields alone don't account for: epidemic.

When sickness broke out, a nearby house was pressed into service as a hospital. And when people died, as people do in epidemics, they came to this ground. At least ten federal soldiers are among the victims buried here.

Ten men, at minimum, who didn't make it through whatever swept through that makeshift hospital. The five families who owned this site over the years — their members are interred here too, woven into the same soil as the customs collector, the poet's wife, and the soldiers. The last burial was in 1941.

After a century of receiving the dead — raided settlers, epidemic victims, federal soldiers, and family — this ground went quiet. Some cemeteries tell you about a town. This one tells you about an entire era of Texas, right there in the grass and the headstones, starting with one August day in 1840 and ending just shy of living memory.

What the marker says

The oldest known grave here is that of Major H. Oram Watts, the customs collector at Linnville and casualty of a Comanche raid on that nearby settlement, Aug. 8, 1840. The site was called Ranger Cemetery after the burial in 1850 of Margaret Peyton Lytle, wife of James T. Lytle (d. 1854), the "poet" of the Texas Rangers. When an epidemic broke out during the Civil War (1861-65), a nearby house was used as a hospital. At least 10 federal soldiers were among victims buried here. Members of the 5 families who owned the site are also interred in Ranger Cemetery. Last burial was in 1941. (1975) Historic Texas Cemetery medallion -- 2009