Waller Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Some stories start with a beginning, and some start with an ending. The story of Waller Cemetery, out in Grimes County, starts with both at the same time.

According to oral history, a young man named Alexander Waller was the first person laid to rest on that ground. And here's the part that stops you cold: he died shortly after helping his father choose the very spot. The family burial ground, on land his father had purchased in 1872.

Alexander helped pick the place, and then the place claimed him first. That is the kind of thing that echoes down through a family for generations. His father was John Waller, a veteran of the 15th Texas Cavalry, and his wife Frances, born a Dyer.

Together they had eleven children, and several of those children eventually came to rest in the same ground Alexander found first. John had ridden with the 15th Texas Cavalry, and he was not the only Confederate veteran whose story ended in this quiet corner of Grimes County. Thomas Cothran is there.

Jesse Long is there. Oliver Smoot is there. Men who had seen things most folks never see, all of them eventually settling into that same Sulphur Branch soil.

And it wasn't only the Waller family and the veterans. The Sulphur Branch community, many of its founding families, found their way to this cemetery over the years. That includes two African-American families, who were originally buried outside the main cemetery, a detail the marker does not let us forget, and neither should we.

It's a quiet but important truth about how communities were divided even in death. Today, Waller Cemetery continues to serve descendants of those early residents of Sulphur Branch. A place chosen in grief, marked by loss from the very first, and still keeping faith with the people whose stories began there.

What the marker says

According to oral history, Alexander Waller was the first person to be buried at this site. He died shortly after helping his father choose the family burial ground on their land purchased in 1872. John Waller, a veteran of the 15th Texas Cavalry, and his wife Frances (Dyer), had eleven children, several of whom are buried in this cemetery. Other Confederate veterans are interred here: Thomas Cothran, Jesse Long, and Oliver Smoot. Many more Sulphur Branch community families rest here, including two African-American families originally buried outside the main cemetery. Waller Cemetery continues to serve descendants of the early residents of Sulphur Branch.