Sterling Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Robertson County, you're rolling past a piece of ground that holds roughly four hundred Texas pioneers and their descendants. Four hundred souls, resting on land that started its story back in 1835, when a grant went to a man named A.

J. Webb. That's where the clock begins.

Fifteen years later, in 1850, a man named Judge Robert Calvert bought that land. Now, Judge Calvert was a civic leader in a town called Sterling, and Sterling itself was named for Empresario Sterling C. Robertson.

The names layer up out here like sediment. Judge Calvert looked at that land and decided it needed two things: a place to bury the dead, and a place to worship among the living. So he dedicated eleven and one tenth acres as a cemetery, and right next door he built a Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Built it from his own plantation timber. His own. That's a man putting his resources where his convictions were.

Then comes 1867. Judge Calvert died, and he was buried near the very gate of the cemetery he had dedicated. You have to sit with that a moment.

The man who gave the ground became part of it, right there at the entrance. Somewhere in that same era, the church building he constructed was moved, and I mean physically moved, by oxen, two miles east to a new town called Calvert. Oxen.

That church traveled on animal power to a brand new place. Then in 1868, Judge Calvert's wife, Mary Keesee Calvert, and their three daughters deeded the cemetery site to the Cumberland Presbyterians, making official and permanent what the Judge had set in motion. Four hundred pioneers in the ground, a church carried away by oxen, and a family that made sure none of it was forgotten.

That's Robertson County holding up its end of the bargain.

What the marker says

Burial place of some 400 Texas pioneers and descendants. On land granted (1835) to A. J. Webb; bought in 1850 by Judge Robert Calvert, a civic leader in Sterling, a town named for Empresario Sterling C. Robertson. Calvert dedicated 11.1-acre cemetery and built adjacent Cumberland Presbyterian Church of his own plantation timber. In 1867, Judge Calvert died and was buried near cemetery gate. The church building was moved by oxen to new town of Calvert (2 mi. E). In 1868, his wife, Mary Keesee Calvert, and their three daughters deeded cemetery site to the Cumberland Presbyterians.