Swift Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Swift Cemetery in Newton County. Back in 1835, a man named Seth Swift founded a trading village called Salem. Now, Seth wasn't your typical Texas frontiersman.

He was a Quaker and a whaling merchant, and he had made his way down here from Massachusetts, bringing with him his wife Lydia and six children. A long way to travel, and a long way from the sea. But here he planted roots.

Here he made his home. And here, eventually, he would stay forever. Lydia died around 1852, and when she did, Seth set aside an acre of land for a cemetery.

Just one acre, carved out of whatever this country was back then, to give her a proper resting place. He held onto that grief quietly, the way people do when they're building something meant to last. And then, in 1869, Seth Swift himself passed on.

Now, here's the detail that stops you cold. He was buried right beside Lydia, in a pink marble casket he had brought all the way from Massachusetts. He had planned for it.

He had carried that casket with him, or had it sent, or had it waiting, because he always meant to lie beside her when the time came. Several other members of the community are believed to rest there, too, though the years were not kind to the memory of the place. The forest crept in, the way forests do in East Texas, slow and certain, and for a long stretch of years that graveyard was simply lost, swallowed by overgrowth, forgotten by most.

But it has since been restored. Seth Swift, the Quaker whale merchant who followed his family to the edge of the known world and had a pink marble casket waiting for the end of the road, deserves at least that much.

What the marker says

The trading village of Salem was founded in 1835 by Seth Swift. A Quaker and whaling merchant, Swift had moved to this area from Massachusetts with his wife, Lydia, and six children. When Lydia died about 1852, Swift set aside an acre of land for a cemetery. Upon his death in 1869, Swift was buried beside his wife in a pink marble casket he had brought from Massachusetts. Several other members of the community are believed to be interred in the cemetery, as well. Lost to forest overgrowth for many years, the graveyard has been restored.