White Rock Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I tell it, this comes straight from the official marker for White Rock Cemetery in McLennan County, so let's honor what's recorded and what's only remembered. Now, local tradition will tell you this cemetery got its start with the burial of a drifter, back in 1855. No name, no kin, no forwarding address.

Just a drifter, and the ground that received him. That's the story folks have passed down. But tradition and the record book don't always shake hands, and the first burial anyone actually wrote down was that of Elizabeth A.

Bennett, in 1856. From that beginning, the cemetery grew to serve a whole stretch of Central Texas life. White Rock, West, Elm Mott, Gholson, Ross, Waco.

Communities spread across the land, and when their people passed, many of them found their way here. In 1947, the graveyard was enlarged. The ground needed more room, and more room was made.

Then in 1959, the White Rock Cemetery Association stepped in and made arrangements for the cemetery's upkeep. Someone decided this place deserved tending, and they saw to it. More than 1,675 people are buried here now.

Among them, many of the area's first settlers and their descendants. And veterans. Veterans of wars ranging from the Texas Revolution all the way to Vietnam.

Generation after generation, they came home to this ground. That unnamed drifter in 1855, if the tradition holds, started something that outlasted everyone who knew his name. Which, of course, was no one.

What the marker says

Although local tradition claims this cemetery began with the burial of a drifter in 1855, the first recorded burial was that of Elizabeth A. Bennett in 1856. The cemetery served the communities of White Rock, West, Elm Mott, Gholson, Ross, and Waco. The graveyard was enlarged in 1947, and in 1959 the White Rock Cemetery Association made arrangements for the cemetery's upkeep. Among the more than 1,675 people buried here are many of the area's first settlers and their descendants and veterans of wars ranging from the Texas Revolution to the Vietnam War.