DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Rice Cemetery, out in Navarro County — and it's more story than you might expect from a patch of quiet ground. The Rice community put down roots during the late 1860s, and it carries the name of one William Marsh Rice — a man who donated land for the town's railroad station and who would later go on to found Rice University. That's the same name, two legacies, one marker.
In 1868, the citizens of the community were granted land for a cemetery by the trustees of the William M. Rice interests. Now that's a particular kind of gift — not land for the living, but land for the ones who come after.
Originally, the cemetery sat about one and a half miles south of where it stands today. Sometime during the 1870s, the whole thing was removed to this site. Moving a cemetery is no small undertaking, and the folks who carried that out weren't moving furniture — they were moving memory.
The three original cemetery trustees, William D. Haynie, John A. Clopton, and Isaac B.
Sessions, are themselves buried here — in the oldest section, the northern section, the part of the ground that holds the earliest of everything. That northern stretch also contains burial sites marked with nothing more than small rock fragments or similar material. No names.
No dates. Just stone set into earth by someone who knew who lay there, even if we no longer do. Now, the veterans.
Rice Cemetery holds the marked grave of Joseph Calloway Bartlett, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence — which means this ground holds someone who was there at the very making of Texas. Four participants in the Civil War rest here too. Two Spanish-American War veterans.
And then come the rows from World War I and World War II, one generation's grief stacking on top of another's. The tombstones themselves tell a harder story in the oldest sections — the high infant mortality rate of the 1880s pressed into stone, and then the early twentieth-century flu epidemic leaving its own quiet mark across the rows. A good example of a pioneer graveyard, the marker says.
And that's true. But what it really is — is a ledger. Names, wars, epidemics, infants, trustees, veterans, and plain flat rocks where a name should be.
Navarro County's recorded history doesn't just live in courthouses and deed books. Some of it is right here, under your feet.
What the marker says
The Rice community was settled during the late 1860s and was named for William Marsh Rice, who donated land for the town's railroad station and later founded Rice University. In 1868, the citizens of the community were granted land for a cemetery by the trustees of the William M. Rice interests. Originally located about one and one-half miles south, the Rice Cemetery was removed to this site during the 1870s. The three original cemetery trustees, William D. Haynie, John A. Clopton, and Isaac B. Sessions, are buried in the oldest, or northern, section of the graveyard. That section also contains many burial sites that are marked only with small rock fragments or similar material. Rice Cemetery contains marked graves of numerous war veterans, including that of Joseph Calloway Bartlett, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence. In addition, four participants in the Civil War, two Spanish-American War veterans, and numerous World War I and II veterans also are interred here. Tombstones reflect the high infant mortality rate of the 1880s and the early 20th-century flu epidemic. A good example of a pioneer graveyard, the Rice Cemetery is an important part of Navarro County's recorded history.