DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Wheatville and its cemetery, out here in Morris County. Now, some places earn their names in blood or battle. Wheatville earned its the quieter way — one pioneer settler named William Wheat stopped somewhere along a main road headed to Jefferson, forty miles to the southeast, sometime in the 1840s, and a community started growing up around that spot.
Maybe it was a rest stop. Maybe it was a general store. The marker says it was both, and out on a long dusty road to Jefferson, either one was worth its weight in gold.
By the 1850s, Wheatville had filled itself out proper — a cotton gin, a grist mill, a school, a church. The kind of place where you could grind your grain, tend your soul, and educate your children all in the same afternoon. A post office came along in 1868, which is about the time a town stops feeling like a camp and starts feeling like a home.
Now, the cemetery had already been receiving its first guests. The first recorded burial there was a man named John S. Sheppard, in 1863.
That date sits quiet and heavy in the middle of the story. Then the 1880s arrived, and with them came the railroad — and when the railroad came, it didn't come to Wheatville. It came to Naples, three miles to the south.
And that, friends, is all it takes. Businesses packed up. Residents followed.
Wheatville began its long, slow lean toward the past. But here's the thing about Wheatville — it sent someone into the world who made an extraordinary mark. Morris Sheppard, born in 1875, a native son of this fading little town, went on to serve as a United States Senator from 1913 all the way to 1941.
And he died that same year, 1941, still in the seat. The graveyard, meanwhile, never closed. Long after the cotton gin went quiet and the post office went dark, the cemetery kept on doin' what cemeteries do — servin' the area, takin' in its dead, holdin' the memory of a place that the railroad decided to pass by.
Wheatville may have declined, but it never quite disappeared. The ground remembers.
What the marker says
Wheatville, named for pioneer settler William Wheat, began as a rest stop/general store on a main road to Jefferson (40 mi. SE) in the 1840s. During the 1850s a cotton gin, grist mill, school, and church were established here. A post office was opened in 1868. The first recorded burial in the community cemetery was that of John S. Sheppard in 1863. The town declined in the 1880s as businesses and residents moved to the new railroad town of Naples (3 mi. S). Wheatville native Morris Sheppard (1875-1941) served as U. S. Senator from 1913-1941. The graveyard continues to serve the area. (1994)