Thomas Easter Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it: the story of Thomas Easter Cemetery in Tarrant County. Now, some men come to Texas and leave a name on a courthouse, a county seat, maybe a river bend. Thomas Easter left something quieter than that; a patch of ground that outlasted him, and a story that took a long time for anybody to write down.

Easter was a Virginia man, born around 1823, and by 1848 he had made his way to Tarrant County. That alone tells you something. Tarrant County in 1848 was not exactly a gentle proposition.

But Easter put down roots. He patented a 640-acre tract of land: six hundred and forty acres, sitting right there in the northeast corner of the county. A man with that much land was planting himself for the long haul.

He didn't make it as long as he might have hoped. Thomas Easter died in 1862, and when he did, a portion of that land he had carved out became the place where people would be laid to rest. That's how a working farm becomes something more permanent than any farm can be.

His wife Charity (born around 1820 herself, which means she'd seen a few things before Texas ever entered the picture) was buried there in the early 1880s. And she wasn't alone in that ground. A man named Hardin West, one of the early settlers of the area, born in 1809, died on March the tenth, 1881, and he rests there too.

But here's the part that sits with you. The cemetery contains several unmarked graves. Several.

Nobody left a name, nobody left a date. Just the earth keeping its own counsel about who came before us. And right beside this burial ground, through the whole of the nineteenth century, stood the Easter Schoolhouse.

The living learning their letters, the dead resting just a few steps away. That's about as honest a picture of a frontier community as you're ever going to find. The marker for Thomas Easter Cemetery was placed in 1983; more than a hundred and twenty years after Easter himself was the first to need it.

Some things take a while to get the recognition they deserve.

What the marker says

Virginia native Thomas Easter, born about 1823, migrated to Texas and settled in Tarrant County by 1848. Easter patented a 640-acre tract of land in the northeast corner of the county. A portion of this land was used as a cemetery upon his death in 1862. His wife Charity Easter, born about 1820, was buried here in the early 1880s. Another known burial is that of early settler Hardin West (b. 1809), who died on March 10, 1881. The Cemetery contains several unmarked graves. The Easter Schoolhouse stood beside the burial ground during the 19th Century. (1983)