Rosedale Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official Rosedale Cemetery marker has to say — and friend, this one's got layers. It starts the way a lot of good Texas stories start: with a couple and a piece of land. In 1844, John Kettle Armstrong and his wife Sarah bought 160 acres out here in what would become Gregg County.

They were among the very first settlers. That's a particular kind of courage — showing up before there's much of anything to show up to. Sarah died in 1856.

And Armstrong, in his grief, set aside this tract for a cemetery. That's how this ground became sacred ground. Now, tradition — and the marker is careful to say tradition — holds that Armstrong's enslaved people were interred outside the cemetery grounds.

Not within. Outside. That detail deserves a moment of stillness, because it tells you something true and heavy about the world this land was born into.

Armstrong himself died in 1860. His second wife, Margaret Fisher, went on to marry a Mr. Stewart.

And for years, the Armstrongs and the Stewarts opened these grounds to everyone — anybody who needed a place to lay their dead. People called it Stewart Cemetery. A generous name for a generous practice.

Then the railroad came through and started the town of Gladewater, and things began to change. In 1911, a cemetery association organized and changed the name from Stewart Cemetery to Rosedale. Around that same time, they purchased an additional five acres — from a man named J.

K. Armstrong and his wife, interestingly enough. Instead of selling burial lots outright, the association sold what they called permits for burial.

You might wonder why they bothered with the distinction. Well, here's where the story gets genuinely clever. When the East Texas oil boom hit, that policy — permits instead of lots — meant all the surface and mineral rights stayed with the association.

Every last one of them. So in 1932, they drilled two oil wells. Right here.

On the burial ground. Now, I'll let that image sit with you for a second — derricks rising up among the grave markers, the hum of machinery over hallowed earth. The profits didn't go to speculators or outside interests.

They went back into the grounds. The association used the money to build a caretaker's cottage, lay in roads, put up a rock fence, and landscape the whole place. For forty-one years those wells pumped.

Then, in 1973, they were plugged. Today, Rosedale Cemetery is still in use. It holds about 265 unmarked graves and around 750 marked ones.

And if you walk the older sections, you'll notice something — many of the older plots are covered with large red rocks. The land keeps its own kind of record. From a couple arriving with 160 acres and high hopes, to oil wells drilling between the headstones, to a rock fence paid for by the dead — Rosedale has been a lot of things.

But it has always, in the end, been a place people came back to.

What the marker says

When John Kettle Armstrong and his wife Sarah bought 160 acres here in 1844, they were among the first settlers. Sarah died in 1856 and Armstrong set aside this tract for a cemetery. Tradition says the Armstrong slaves were interred outside the grounds. After Armstrong's death in 1860, his second wife Margaret Fisher married a Mr. Stewart. For years the Armstrongs and Stewarts allowed everyone to use the graveyard which was called "Stewart Cemetery." After the railroad started the town of Gladewater, a cemetery association organized in 1911 and changed the name of the graveyard to "Rosedale." An additional five acres were purchased from J. K. Armstrong and his wife. "Permits" for burial were sold instead of lots. When the East Texas oil boom began, this policy allowed all surface and mineral rights to remain with the association. In 1932 two oil wells were drilled on the burial ground. The association used the profits to build a caretaker's cottage, roads, a rock fence and to landscape the grounds. In 1973, after 41 years, the wells were plugged. Still in use, the burial ground has about 265 unmarked and 750 marked graves. Many of the older plots are covered with large red rocks.