Shanks Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words. Two brothers, Matthew and Robert Shanks, made the long haul from Alabama and put down roots right here in Freestone County in 1859, bringing their families with them. A small farming community took shape around them, the kind of place that builds itself one season at a time.

By 1870, that community had grown enough to need a school, and a man named R. C. Murray donated a one-acre site to make it happen.

So they built one. Now, land has a way of taking on new purposes over time, and the ground beside that schoolyard was no exception. It became a public burial ground, a place where the community would eventually lay its own to rest.

When the Shanks Post Office opened in 1896, that cemetery took on the name folks still know it by today. Shanks Cemetery. The earliest recorded burial belongs to Burgess A.

Whatley, born in 1854, laid to rest in 1892. A year later, in 1893, a man named G. W.

Bell deeded another half acre east of the graveyard, expanding the ground set aside for the dead. The school building itself didn't last forever. It was torn down in 1917, leaving the cemetery as the quiet keeper of everything that had once surrounded it.

But someone has to tend a place like that, and since 1935, the Shanks Cemetery Association has done exactly that, maintaining the site year after year. Some communities fade without a trace. This one left a graveyard and the people willing to look after it.

That counts for something.

What the marker says

Matthew and Robert Shanks of Alabama settled here with their families in 1859. A small farming community developed, and in 1870 a school was built on a one-acre site donated by R. C. Murray. Land beside the schoolyard became a public burial ground, known as Shanks Cemetery after Shanks Post Office opened in 1896. The earliest recorded burial was Burgess A. Whatley (1854-1892). In 1893 G. W. Bell deeded another half acre east of the graveyard. The school building was torn down in 1917. Shanks Cemetery Association has maintained the site since 1935. (1977) (Historic Texas Cemetery medallion)