Stewart Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in eastern Hunt County, there's a piece of ground that has been holding people's stories since before the Civil War, before the cattle drives, before the turn of a century that brought so many strangers rolling in. That ground is Stewart Cemetery, and its story starts with a family.

John and Ellen Stewart and their children settled in this area about 1843. According to oral history, John Stewart is credited with building the first pioneer home in eastern Hunt County. That's the kind of distinction that doesn't come with a ceremony, just with an axe and a lot of nerve.

Other settlers started arriving not long after. Godfrey Smith, William Rippy, their families, coming in around 1845, filling in the edges of a place that was just starting to become a community. John Stewart and his neighbors didn't just farm and raise stock.

They took on the civic work too, serving as county appraisers, county clerks, justices of the peace. The kind of men a young county leans on. John Stewart died about 1856.

Ellen and their children stayed. They weren't going anywhere. They sold six hundred and forty acres of land to William Jernigan, a man credited as the founding father of nearby Cowhill, which folks today know as Commerce.

The land changed hands, but the family stayed rooted. Now, the cemetery itself. Earlier graves are believed to exist there, lost to time and weather, their markers gone silent.

But the earliest legible marker belongs to a child. Three-year-old Elif Cummins, buried in 1863. That name deserves to be said slowly.

Three years old, in 1863, in a county that was already sending its young men to war. Two of John and Ellen's sons, R. E. and John F.

Stewart, joined the Confederate Army in 1861, along with other neighbors. R. E.

Stewart, aged twenty-nine, was killed in battle near Little Rock, Arkansas. He was interred there, far from this Hunt County ground. His brother John F. and other Confederate veterans did make it back, and they were buried on this site.

The war took R. E. from the family plot, but not from memory. Time moved forward, as it does.

Farmers and cattlemen began moving into the area in large numbers around the turn of the twentieth century. Some of those newcomers took on a quiet, solemn duty: they dug the graves of the earlier settlers as they passed away. Neighbors burying neighbors, even neighbors they'd only just met.

And during the early nineteen hundreds, an epidemic came through. Many young children died and were buried here. You feel that in the ground if you're paying attention.

In 1907, Julia Stewart and Martin Williams officially deeded Stewart Cemetery to the cemetery association. A formal handing over of a responsibility that had already been carried for decades. Among the graves worth pausing at is that of State Representative Louis Lankford, who died in 1940.

Lankford served in the Texas Legislature representing Hunt and Rains counties, and before that, he'd served in the Spanish-American War. A man of some standing, buried in a cemetery that started with a pioneer family and a patch of eastern Hunt County soil. That's the thing about a place like Stewart Cemetery.

It doesn't belong to any one era. It belongs to all of them at once, from 1843 clear on through, holding everyone it was ever asked to hold.

What the marker says

John and Ellen Stewart and their children settled in this area about 1843. According to oral history, John Stewart is credited with building the first pioneer home in eastern Hunt County. Other settlers such as Godfrey Smith, William Rippy and their families began to arrive in 1845. John and his neighbors were county appraisers, county clerks and justices of the peace. John Stewart died about 1856. Ellen Stewart and their children remained in Hunt County. They sold 640 acres of land to William Jernigan, credited as founding father of nearby Cowhill (present Commerce). Though earlier graves are believed to exist in Stewart Cemetery, the earliest legible marker is that of three-year-old Elif Cummins, who was buried here in 1863. Two of John and Ellen Stewart's sons, R. E. and John F. Stewart, as well as other neighbors joined the Confederate Army in 1861. R. E. Stewart, aged 29, was killed in battle near Little Rock, Arkansas; he was interred there, but his brother and other Confederate veterans were buried on this site. Farmers and cattlemen began moving into the area in large numbers around the turn of the 20th century.Several of the newcomers dug the graves of the earlier settlers as they passed away. Many young children died and were buried here during an epidemic in the early 1900s. Julia Stewart and Martin Williams officially deeded Stewart Cemetery to the cemetery association in 1907. Graves of interest include that of State Representative Louis Lankford, who died in 1940. Lankford was a member of the Texas Legislature from Hunt and Rains counties and served in the Spanish-American War. (1999)