Tomlin Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Tomlin Cemetery in Tarrant County. Now settle in, because this one's got layers. The land tells you its story if you know how to read it, and out here, you start reading with the rocks.

This cemetery was first used in the 1870s, by a pioneer family called the Wilkinsons. You'll find their graves marked by clusters of rock, the kind of markers that don't need chiseling to carry weight. Members of the Angel family are buried here too, their names woven quietly into the same ground.

But the oldest dated gravestone belongs to a man who came a long way to find his final resting place. Soloman Tomlin, born in 1825, a Virginia native, was a horseman and a farmer, and somewhere along the way in the 1860s, he packed up his family and migrated to Texas. He lived here long enough to matter.

He died on July 9, 1884. Now, his son, James Tives Tomlin, though most folks apparently knew him as Buck, was cut from similar cloth, only with a flair for the spectacular. Born in 1852, Buck Tomlin became a noted breeder of fine racing horses.

And in 1888, four years after his father passed, Buck bought the cemetery property itself. He lived until 1934, long enough to see the twentieth century come roaring in. The land has since been designated to serve the descendants of the Tomlin family.

So what started with rock-marked graves in the 1870s became, over the years, something deliberate: a place held, tended, and kept for the people who carry that name forward. Out here on the Texas road, you pass a lot of quiet fields. Every now and then, one of them is keeping a whole story.

This is one of those fields.

What the marker says

This cemetery was first used in the 1870s by the Wilkinsons, a pioneer family whose graves are marked by clusters of rock. Members of the Angel family are also buried here. The oldest dated gravestone is that of Virginia native Soloman Tomlin (b. 1825), a horseman and farmer who migrated with his family to Texas in the 1860s. He died on July 9, 1884. His son James Tives "Buck" Tomlin (1852-1934), a noted breeder of fine racing horses, bought the cemetery property in 1888. It has since been designated to serve the descendants of the Tomlin Family.