Saturn Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Saturn Cemetery in Gonzales County. A community started growin near this site back in the 1870s, and folks couldn't quite agree on what to call it. For a while it went by Possum Trot.

Then Prickly Pear. Then Ettowa. Three names, one little settlement, and none of them stuck for good.

It wasn't until 1902 that a post office was established, and that post office brought the name Saturn along with it. How a stretch of South Texas brush ended up named for a ringed planet is not a question this story answers. But Saturn it became, and Saturn it stayed.

Now, before the town had its name, before the post office, before any of that was settled, the land itself was already keeping a quiet record. Hugh and Elizabeth McMillan, Elizabeth being a Burleson by birth, sold two acres at this site to the Good Hope Primitive Baptist Church in 1882, for the purpose of a cemetery. But here's the thing.

The ground wasn't waiting on that sale to become sacred. Their daughter, Martha McMillan Dubose, had been laid to rest right here in 1880, two years before the deed was ever signed. The cemetery grew from there, as cemeteries do.

The McMillan family, the Dubose family, and other members of the Saturn community all came to call this ground their final home. Time passed. The community changed.

And in 1974, a cemetery association was formed to oversee the place and keep it from being forgotten. Which is, when you think about it, exactly what a cemetery is for. Possum Trot, Prickly Pear, Ettowa, Saturn.

The names changed, but the ground held on to every one of them.

What the marker says

A community began to develop near this site during the 1870s and was known by several names, including Possum Trot, Prickly Pear, and Ettowa before a post office was established under the name Saturn in 1902. Hugh and Elizabeth (Burleson) McMillan sold two acres at this site to the Good Hope Primitive Baptist Church for a cemetery in 1882. The site was already the resting place of their daughter Martha McMillan Dubose, who died in 1880. The burial ground continued to be used by the McMillan and Dubose families, as well as other members of the Saturn community. A cemetery association was formed in 1974 to oversee the operations of the cemetery, which serves as a reminder of early Gonzales county pioneers.