Telico Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker at Telico Cemetery tells it, and I'm passing it along to you straight. Now, every good story has to start somewhere, and this one starts with a grave. May 1, 1867: that's the day the Reverend William J.

Kirkpatrick, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister serving the local community, passed from this world. And so the first soul laid to rest in what would become Telico Cemetery was the preacher himself. There's something fitting about that, if you sit with it long enough.

Not long after Reverend Kirkpatrick's death, another minister, the Reverend W.G.L. Quaite, organized a congregation and named it in Kirkpatrick's honor. A place of worship went up near that very gravesite, and just like that, a church was born out of a burial.

The land surrounding Kirkpatrick's grave belonged to Major Henry Pannill, a Confederate veteran who ran a plantation in those parts. And then October of 1867 brought Major Pannill his own grief: his son Joseph died and was buried close to Kirkpatrick's resting place. Two graves now, side by side in the red Ellis County soil.

The following year, Major Pannill deeded a portion of his land around those burial sites to the trustees of the Kirkpatrick Cumberland Presbyterian Church. That act, a father signing over ground where his own child lay, set something in motion. Within the next decade, the community of Telico grew up right around that church building and cemetery.

A whole village, rooted in memory. But here's where the story takes that familiar Texas turn. After the turn of the century, people started drifting away from Telico, drawn toward the conveniences of a railroad town called Ennis, sitting about six miles to the west.

And as the village emptied out, the cemetery fell into a period of neglect. More than three hundred known graves, and nearly half of them hold children under the age of ten. Forty-five of those graves date before 1882: pioneers, every one of them, facing hardships that would buckle most of us just to read about.

The cemetery had been forgotten by the living for a good long while. But since 1937, the Telico Cemetery Association has been caring for the grounds, tending the place where Reverend Kirkpatrick was first laid down, where a community took root, flourished, and faded. Some stories end in a town.

This one ends in the quiet keeping of a cemetery that outlasted everything built around it.

What the marker says

The first burial in this cemetery was that of the Rev. William J. Kirkpatrick, a local Cumberland Presbyterian Minister, who died on May 1, 1867. Shortly after his death, a congregation organized by the Rev. W.G.L. Quaite was named in Kirkpatrick's honor, and a place of worship was constructed later near the gravesite. Land surrounding Kirkpatrick's grave was part of the plantation of Confederate veteran Major Henry Pannill. Pannill's son Joseph died in October 1867 and was buried near Kirkpatrick's gravesite. The following year Pannill deeded some of his land around the burial sites to trustees of the Kirkpatrick Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Within the next decade the community of Telico grew up around the church building and cemetery. After the turn of the century, however, people began abandoning the village for the conveniences of the railroad town of Ennis (6 mi. W), and the cemetery fell into a period of neglect. Telico Cemetery serves as a reminder of the hardships faced by area pioneers. Of the more than 300 known graves, 45 date before 1882 and almost half are of children under the age of ten. Since 1937 the Telico Cemetery Association has cared for the grounds.