Rochelle Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the words on the official marker, so here's the story as it stands. Now, out here in McCulloch County, a lot of places got their start on the back of one man's ambitions and one man's grief, and the Rochelle Cemetery is about as good an example of that as you're likely to find anywhere along the old Brady-San Saba Road. It begins with E.E.

Willoughby, born in 1853, and by the time our story picks up, a cattleman out of Tarrant County with an eye for land and a willingness to move. In 1883 he pulled up stakes and headed to Rochelle, which in those days sat about a mile and a half to the southwest of where you're standing now. He acquired land right along the Brady-San Saba Road in 1886, which tells you something about the man: he knew where the traffic moved.

In 1889, Willoughby did something that communities remember for a long time. He donated two acres near this site for a school and a church building, a building that had itself already traveled, moved up here from its original 1886 location about a mile to the south. So the building had a history of moving before Willoughby ever got involved, and he gave it somewhere new to stand.

And then 1894 arrives, and the story shifts register entirely. Willoughby's son, Ernest Eckie, just nineteen months old, died that year. And Willoughby buried that infant near the school.

There's no flourish needed there. A father buried his baby boy beside the place the community gathered to learn and to worship. Two years later, in 1896, Willoughby deeded one acre here as the Rochelle Cemetery.

You can draw your own conclusions about why that particular acre mattered to him. A new school went up here in 1899. And then, in 1903, the whole community picked itself up and moved about two miles northwest to meet the new Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railroad.

That's how it went in those days. The railroad didn't come to you; you went to the railroad. The community that resettled there got a new name first (Crothers) but it didn't stay Crothers long.

It was soon renamed Rochelle. Now, the cemetery out here didn't move with the town. It stayed put.

And the graves here carry a quiet record of that transition. The tombstones of Reverend and Mrs. C.W.

Jones tell an interesting little story all by themselves: her stone says she died in Crothers in 1906, his says he died in Rochelle in 1910, and yet they both died at their home in the same town. Same place, two names, two different moments in time. That's a town changing its name right there in the stone.

Willoughby deeded another acre to the cemetery in 1910, expanding the ground he'd first set aside back in the grief of 1896. But here's the wry footnote the marker gives us: after all that land he gave to this cemetery, after the school, the church, the acres deeded across the years, E.E. Willoughby himself was not buried here.

When he died in 1935, he was laid to rest in Brady, at Live Oak Cemetery. The man who built this place is not in it. Also in 1935, the rock fence you see here was built.

By 1943, four more acres had been purchased. Today the cemetery holds almost five hundred graves, a hundred and five of them unmarked, which is its own kind of history, the kind that doesn't speak its name. An association founded in 1972 looks after the grounds now, tending a place that has outlasted the town that left it, the man who made it, and two different names on the same set of tombstones.

Nearly five hundred souls, and it all started because a cattleman from Tarrant County had a nineteen-month-old boy he needed to put somewhere sacred.

What the marker says

E.E. Willoughby (1853-1935), a cattleman from Tarrant County, moved to Rochelle (then about 1.5 mi. SW) in 1883. He acquired land here in 1886 along the Brady-San Saba Road. In 1889 he donated two acres near this site for the community's school and church building, moved here from its original 1886 site about one mile south. When Willoughby's 19-month-old son Ernest Eckie died in 1894, he buried the infant near the school. In 1896, Willoughby deeded one acre here as the Rochelle Cemetery. A new school was built here in 1899. The community and schoolhouse were moved in 1903 about 2 miles northwest to the new Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railroad. This cemetery continued to serve the new community, first named Crothers but soon renamed Rochelle. The tombstones here of the Rev. and Mrs. C.W. Jones indicate that she died in Crothers (1906) and he died in Rochelle (1910), though they both died at their home in the same town. Willoughby deeded another acre to this cemetery in 1910, but he was ultimately buried in Brady at Live Oak Cemetery. The rock fence here was built in 1935, and four more acres were purchased in 1943. The cemetery contains almost 500 graves, of which 105 are unmarked. An association founded in 1972 cares for the grounds. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986