DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture West Texas hill country, sometime in the 1860s, when a man named Reuben S. Senterfitt came to this area.
Pioneer is the word the record uses, and pioneer is what he was — arriving in a place that didn't yet have a name, in a time when that was still possible. Well, the land must have agreed with him, because a town gradually built up, and eventually it carried his name. At its peak, Senterfitt wasn't some lonesome crossroads.
It boasted hotels — plural — mills, stores, saloons, a school, churches, and a stage stop. People were comin' and goin', buying and selling, prayin' and probably raisin' a little cain on the weekends. There was a fullness to the place.
And through all of it, there was this cemetery. Then came the 1890s, and the railroad went somewhere else. Bypassed Senterfitt entirely.
And when the railroad doesn't stop, neither do the people — at least not for long. The town declined, the way towns do when the commerce finds a different route. But the cemetery remained, and that's where we're standing now.
The oldest documented burial here belongs to Joseph C. Howell, who died in 1877 at the age of three. Three years old.
The weight of that number doesn't need any elaboration from me. Around him, and across the generations, rest veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam — men and women who came to this land, or were born to it, and gave everything the world could ask. A town built up, a railroad passed it by, and the ground kept the record.
That's Senterfitt Cemetery.
What the marker says
Pioneer Reuben S. Senterfitt came to this area in the 1860s. A town named for him gradually built up and at its peak boasted hotels, mills, stores, saloons, a school, churches, a stage stop, and this cemetery. The town declined after it was bypassed by the railroad in the 1890s. The cemetery contains the graves of many early settlers. The oldest documented burial here is that of Joseph C. Howell, who died in 1877 at the age of three. Also interred in the graveyard are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam.