Turnersville Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker at Turnersville Cemetery has to say, and friend, even a quiet patch of ground has a story worth hearing. Out in Coryell County, there's a cemetery that holds more history than most towns hold in their courthouse. It's the Turnersville Cemetery, and before we talk about the dead, let's talk about the living who put them there.

The community itself started life under a different name. Buchanan Springs, they called it, before it became Turnersville. Settled before the Civil War, which means the people who broke that ground did so in a time when the whole country was about to break right along with it.

But they kept building anyway. By the eighteen eighties, Turnersville had a cotton gin, stores, a school, and three churches. Three churches in a rural Texas community tells you something about the people.

They were serious, they were rooted, and they intended to stay. Ranchers, farmers, merchants, physicians, teachers, ministers, military veterans. The whole fabric of a working community, and when their time came, they didn't go far.

They went right there, to that burial ground on the edge of town, which is where this story really lives. Now, somebody had the good sense to form a cemetery association by nineteen hundred. Smart move.

A cemetery without caretakers is just a field waiting to forget. But then the nineteen thirties arrived, and well, the association disbanded. You can imagine the weight of that decade pressing down on everything, communities, institutions, plans.

The association let go. For a while, those graves had only the grass for company. But here's the part that earns this story its ending.

In nineteen fifty three, the Turnersville Cemetery Association reorganized. Somebody, or a whole group of somebodies, decided that ground was worth tending again. And they have been tending it ever since, the interior fencing, the curbing, the grave slabs, all of it still standing.

Today the cemetery is described on the marker as one of the few remaining vestiges of the Turnersville community. The cotton gin is gone. The stores are gone.

The three churches, gone. But the cemetery association is still meeting, still caring, still showing up for people who showed up for Turnersville long before any of us were around to notice. That's not nothing.

That's just about everything.

What the marker says

TURNERSVILLE CEMETERY THIS BURIAL GROUND SERVED RESIDENTS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY OF TURNERSVILLE (ORIGINALLY BUCHANAN SPRINGS). SETTLED BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR, TURNERSVILLE BOASTED A COTTON GIN, STORES, A SCHOOL, AND THREE CHURCHES BY THE 1880s. THE INTERRED HERE INCLUDE MANY OF THESE PAST RESIDENTS, WITH RANCHERS, FARMERS, MERCHANTS, PHYSICIANS, TEACHERS, MINISTERS, AND MILITARY VETERANS AMONG THEM. CEMETERY FEATURES INCLUDE INTERIOR FENCING, CURBING, AND GRAVE SLABS. A CEMETERY ASSOCIATION FORMED BY 1900, BUT DISBANDED IN THE 1930s. THE TURNERSVILLE CEMETERY ASSOCIATION REORGANIZED IN 1953, AND STILL CONTINUES TO CARE FOR THE BURIAL GROUND. TODAY, THE CEMETERY IS ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING VESTIGES OF THE TURNERSVILLE COMMUNITY. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2010