Vance Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Vance Cemetery, out there in Real County. Now, every cemetery has to start somewhere, and this one started with a stranger. The year was 1875.

A guest in the home of the Wells family, a man by the name of C. J. Fowler, died.

And they buried him right there on the family's farm. That's the seed of it. One grave, on one piece of ground, in the Nueces Canyon.

The land surrounding Fowler's grave eventually became known as Vance Cemetery, and it has been growing ever since. But let's back up a bit, because you can't tell the story of that cemetery without telling the story of the man whose family land it started on. Henry Wells was born in 1850, and he first came to the Nueces Canyon in 1866; sixteen years old, by my reckoning, riding into country that hadn't been tamed yet.

By 1873 he'd put down enough roots to found an entire town, which he called Bullhead. That name didn't stick forever. Somewhere in the mid-1880s, the town was renamed Vance.

The marker doesn't say why, and I won't pretend otherwise. Now Henry Wells was a man who served his community in more ways than one. He was, among other things, a coffin builder for members of the surrounding area.

Think about what that means in a frontier canyon. When grief came knocking, and in that country, it knocked hard and often, Henry Wells answered. He shaped the wood.

He built the box. He was there at the end of things, again and again. And he kept giving to that cemetery even after Fowler was long in the ground.

In 1917, Henry Wells donated more land to enlarge it. He'd live another six years after that, dying in 1923, and today he himself is buried in the very ground he helped build. He wasn't the only one who gave.

Rancher Z. H. Pannell, born in 1862 and gone by 1925, donated additional land back in 1909; land for the cemetery and for a church.

That church, the Vance Baptist Church, was built in 1917, the same year Wells made his own donation. Two men, one community, one purpose. Now here's where the story takes on some real weight.

The Vance Cemetery holds Civil War veterans: six of them, interred there in that canyon soil. It holds veterans of World War I and World War II as well. And then there are those who didn't fall in any battle but were taken just as suddenly.

Epidemics of diphtheria and influenza in the early twentieth century swept through and claimed the lives of many area citizens. They're buried here too. Parents, children, neighbors, gone fast, gone young, gone in waves that a community can't quite recover from all at once.

This ground holds a lot of stories that were cut short. The Vance Cemetery Association was organized in 1952 and has been tending the place ever since. And here's the thing: the cemetery is still in use.

Descendants of pioneer settlers are still being laid to rest in the same ground where C. J. Fowler, a guest who never made it home, was buried back in 1875.

One stranger's grave. One family's land. One man who built coffins and donated acres and died in the town he founded.

That's how a community marks itself on the earth, not just by the towns they name, but by the ground they keep.

What the marker says

One of the earliest settlers of this area was Henry Wells (1850-1923), who first came to the Nueces Canyon in 1866. He founded the town of Bullhead in 1873. The name was changed to Vance in the mid-1880s. In 1875 a guest in the home of the Wells Family, C. J. Fowler, died and was buried on the family's farm. The land surrounding Fowler's grave became known as Vance Cemetery. Henry Wells often worked as a coffin builder for members of the community. Rancher Z. H. Pannell (1862-1925) donated additional land in 1909 for the cemetery and a church. The Vance Baptist Church was built in 1917, the same year Henry Wells gave more land to enlarge the cemetery. In addition to the graves of Fowler and Wells, the Vance Cemetery is the burial site of many early pioneers of this area. Six Civil War veterans are interred here, as well as Veterans of World War I and World War II. Epidemics of diphtheria and influenza in the early 20th century claimed the lives of many area citizens who are buried here. The Vance Cemetery Association was organized in 1952 and is responsible for maintenance of the graveyard, which is still in use by descendants of pioneer settlers. (1988)