Rylie Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Rylie Cemetery, out in Dallas County. Now, every piece of land has a first purpose, and then it has the purpose it keeps. Back in 1878, a man named John Armstrong Rylie donated a parcel of land right here in the southeast corner of Dallas County.

His intention was straightforward enough: give the settlers of this stretch of country a place to school their children. A gift to the living, you might say. But land has a way of outlasting its first calling.

The property sat, and the years turned, and then came 1889; and with it, a man named Redden Allumbaugh. His burial was the first in this ground, and just like that, the land found its longer purpose. A cemetery had begun.

Since that day, more than four hundred souls have been laid to rest here. Among them, some of the very earliest settlers of the Rylie Prairie community (the people who broke this ground when it was still raw country) and their descendants after them. Generations deep, all in one place.

At least one Civil War veteran is counted among those buried here. His name was Hartwell Bolin Cox. One veteran, the marker says; at least one.

Makes you wonder about the stories the stones aren't talking. Now, a cemetery without tending is just a field waiting to forget. So in 1962, the Rylie Cemetery Association was founded, organized and dedicated to keeping this ground the way it deserves to be kept.

Maintained. Remembered. John Armstrong Rylie gave this land for a school.

What it became was a place where an entire community laid down its roots; permanently. That's the kind of ending a piece of ground earns.

What the marker says

In 1878, John Armstrong Rylie donated land at this site for use as a school by settlers of this part of southeast Dallas County. The property came into service as a cemetery with the burial of Redden Allumbaugh in 1889. Since that time, more than 400 persons, including a number of Rylie Prairie community's earliest settlers and their descendants, have been interred here. The cemetery contains the burial of at least one Civil War veteran, Hartwell Bolin Cox. The Rylie Cemetery Association was founded in 1962 to maintain the graveyard.