Warthan Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Warthan Cemetery in Red River County. George Washington Warthan came to Texas from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and he didn't come alone. He arrived in 1852 with his brothers, Thomas I. and Robert J.

Now, three brothers showing up together in Texas, that's either a very good plan or a very stubborn family, and with the Warthans, it may well have been both. G.W. wed Amanda Johnson, and the two of them put down roots in the Red River Valley in 1855. Seemed like a man building something meant to last.

Then 1861 came around, and George Washington Warthan mustered into Company E of the 32nd Texas Cavalry. What followed was not a short ride through easy country. He saw action in more than thirty Civil War battles.

More than thirty. In 1864, he was captured and held as a prisoner of war, and he didn't walk back out of that until 1865. He returned to Texas at the age of twenty-nine, and rather than let the years behind him define the years ahead, he got to work.

Through grants and land purchases, he expanded his Red River County landholdings, including land north of the farming community of Garland. Now, that land held something older than Warthan himself, older than his family's time in Texas. A cemetery already sat there, used by area residents, with graves believed to predate the Republic of Texas.

Let that settle for a moment. The Republic of Texas. Whatever names are under those oldest stones, the marker doesn't say.

But somebody was burying their people on that ground long before George Warthan ever saw it. In 1881, he set aside what he dubbed Warthan Cemetery and encouraged his family to preserve the site. That word, preserve, does a lot of work in this story.

Because by the late 1960s, the early grave indicators, the bois d'arc markers and the loose stones left by those first families, had disappeared. Gone. The oldest physical markers, the ones that tied the ground to the people who first consecrated it, simply weren't there anymore.

The cemetery land was formally deeded in 1951 and later enlarged, and the earliest marked grave that survives dates to 1881. So the record starts where Warthan drew the line in the soil and said, this place matters. Today that cemetery remains as a tie to generations of Warthans and other area residents.

A soldier who survived thirty battles and a prisoner-of-war camp came home, looked at a piece of ground older than the state he fought for, and decided it was worth keeping. That's a man who understood something about what endures.

What the marker says

George Washington Warthan came to Texas from Tuscaloosa, Alabama with brothers Thomas I. And Robert J. in 1852. G.W. wed Amanda Johnson, and the couple settled in the Red River Valley in 1855. In 1861, he mustered into Company E of the 32nd Texas Cavalry and during his service saw action in more than 30 Civil War battles. Captured in 1864 and held as a prisoner of war until 1865, he returned to Texas at the age of 29, and through grants and land purchases he expanded his Red River County landholdings. Warthan's acquisitions included land in this area, north of the farming community of Garland. It included a cemetery used by area residents, with graves believed to predate the Republic of Texas. In 1881, he set aside what he dubbed Warthan Cemetery and encouraged his family to preserve the site. By the late 1960s, early grave indicators, including bois d' arc markers and loose stones, had disappeared. The cemetery land was formally deeded in 1951 and later enlarged. The earliest marked grave dates to 1881, and today the cemetery remains as a tie to generations of Warthans and other area residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005