DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Now, you want to talk about a place that carries the whole sweep of a community's story — from the very first breath of freedom all the way to the quiet keeping of memory — then pull over a minute, because Wiley College Cemetery in Harrison County has got something to say. It starts before the cemetery does.
It starts in March of 1873, when the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North — an organization devoted to the education of former slaves and their descendants — established Wiley College right there in Marshall, Texas. They named the school for Bishop Isaac W. Wiley, a charter member of that very society.
The college set down its first roots about three miles south of the town square, then picked itself up and moved to its present location in 1877. Once it was planted for good, four acres of that college property were set aside as a burial ground for the Black community. Over the years, folks have called it both Wiley College Cemetery and Wiley University Cemetery — two names, one sacred ground.
Now here is where the story gets tender, and you'd do right to slow down with it. The earliest documented graves belong to a mother and her child. Little Oscar Laurin Coffin came into this world on March 11, 1894, and left it on May 15 of that same year — sixty-five days, if you're countin', and somebody was.
His mother, Minnie May Coffin, followed him on June 17, 1894. Whatever grief tore through that family, whatever words were said over that ground, the earth kept both of them. And that ground became the beginning.
What grew up around them over the years was a community in full. The Reverend Matthew Dogan, born in 1863 and laid to rest in 1947, is buried here — the man who served as president of Wiley College from 1896 to 1942. Forty-six years at the helm of that institution.
Think about what he saw change, and what he fought to keep standing. Alongside him rest a respected schoolteacher named Effie Mitchell, and educators Henry and Gertrude H. Mason — people who poured themselves into other people's futures, and who now lie quiet in the shade of the place they served.
And then there are the veterans. The marker doesn't give you their names one by one, but it tells you they're there — men who served in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Four conflicts.
Generations of service. All of them under that same four-acre sky. The marker is honest about one more thing, and it deserves saying plainly: the cemetery also contains a large number of unmarked graves.
Names we don't have. Stories we can't tell. That silence is part of the story too.
But here's what I'll leave you with. In 1959, a group of people looked at this ground and decided it was worth caring for. They organized the Wiley College Cemetery Club, and they have been maintaining that historic graveyard ever since.
Nobody forgot. Nobody walked away. Some places hold history.
This one tends it.
What the marker says
The Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, an organization devoted to the education of former slaves and their descendants, established Wiley College in Marshall in March 1873. The school was named for Bishop Isaac W. Wiley, a charter member of the society, and was originally located about three miles south of the town square. The college moved to its present location in 1877. A four-acre plot of the college property was set aside as a burial ground for the Black community, and has been known through the years as both Wiley College Cemetery and Wiley University Cemetery. The earliest documented graves here are those of Oscar Laurin Coffin (March 11 - May 15, 1894) and his mother, Minnie May Coffin (d. June 17, 1894). Other members of the community buried here include the Rev. Matthew Dogan (1863-1947), president of Wiley College from 1896 to 1942; respected schoolteacher Effie Mitchell; educators Henry and Gertrude H. Mason; and veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. The cemetery also contains a large number of unmarked graves. The Wiley College Cemetery Club, organized in 1959, maintains the historic graveyard. (1989)