DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Coleman County, between the towns of Coleman and Brady, there's a quiet patch of ground that holds more history than it looks like it ought to. The marker calls it Shields Cemetery, but the story of how it got here — and how the community around it rose and fell — that's worth slowing down for.
It starts in 1900, with a Baptist church settlement. That was the first community to take root in this vicinity. Then, beginning around 1905, the vast ranch land of the area started getting divided into lots.
People came. Families put down stakes. And early on, those settlers had a name for the place that said everything you needed to know about the road between Coleman and Brady: they called it Double Gates.
Two gates on that road, and a watering hole nearby that pulled travelers in off the dust like a magnet. Simple, practical, honest — which is about as Texas as it gets. Eventually a man named L.
L. Shield built a general store and a post office, and the community took his name. Shield.
A man plants a store, puts up a post office, and suddenly a whole place carries what he built. But communities don't just live by commerce. They're also marked by grief.
In June of 1908, the infant son of J. T. and L. A.
Gilbreath — she was born a Dillingham — died. That baby became the first person interred on the land set aside for a Shield community cemetery. By December of that same year, one acre of ground, including that grave, was donated to County Judge T.
J. White, who held it as trustee. And over time, the cemetery gradually took on the name Shields.
Now here is where the story asks something of you, if you're willing to sit with it. The marker describes the earliest graves here as a testimony to the difficulty of pioneer life. And that is not a phrase thrown around lightly.
Of the thirty-seven people interred during the first ten years of the cemetery's operation, almost half were children younger than three years of age. Two more were teenagers. Four were under the age of twenty-five.
Pioneer life out on that divided ranch land was hard in ways that the word hard doesn't quite cover. There was one exception in those early years — one person older than fifty buried during that first decade. Her name was Susan Winkler McGinnis Godwin, and she died in 1913 at the age of eighty-two.
The marker honors her specifically, with her name incised right into the base of the stone. Eighty-two years. In a cemetery full of lives cut short, that stands out like a tall tree in open country.
The cemetery holds veterans, too — men who served in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, all interred here on this same acre of Coleman County ground. And in the northwest corner, six graves are believed to be those of Catholic Mexican Americans — a reminder that the story of this community, like most Texas communities, belonged to more than one people. The Shield community thrived for a while.
Many of its most influential citizens are buried right here. But after World War II, the community declined. The gates — double as they were — eventually stopped drawing travelers the way they once did.
What remains is Shields Cemetery. The marker calls it a chronicle of its people, and that's exactly right. Thirty-seven souls in the first ten years alone, most of them young, resting in ground that was set aside because one infant boy needed a place in June of 1908.
From that one grave, a whole community's memory took root. Some places earn their names. Some earn something quieter than that — a kind of keeping.
This is one of those.
What the marker says
The first community in this vicinity began as a Baptist church settlement founded in 1900. The vast ranch land of the area was divided into lots beginning about 1905. Early settlers called the community "Double Gates" because there were two gates on the road between the nearby towns of Coleman and Brady. A watering hole near the road also attracted travelers. L. L. Shield built a general store and post office, and the community was named for him. The infant son of J. T. and L. A. (Dillingham) Gilbreath died in June 1908 and became the first person to be interred on land set aside for a Shield community cemetery. One acre of land including the grave was donated to County Judge T. J. White, trustee, in December of that year. The cemetery gradually took on the name Shields. The earliest graves here are a testimony to the difficulty of pioneer life: almost half the 37 people interred during the first ten years of the cemetery's operation were children younger than three years of age, two more were teenagers and four were under the age of twenty-five. Only one person more than fifty years of age was buried during this period: Susan Winkler McGinnis Godwin died in 1913 at age eighty-two. Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War are interred here. Six graves in the northwest corner of the cemetery are believed to be those of Catholic Mexican Americans. The Shield community thrived for a time, and many of its most influential citizens are interred on this site. Though the community declined after World War II, Shields Cemetery remains as a chronicle of its people. (1999) Incising on base: In memory of Susan Winkler McGinnis Godwin