Becton Cemetery
Idalou, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Tennessee native Abner M. Becton moved to the Estacado area in the late 1890s. There, he met and wed Cornelia Bryant. The couple moved in 1898 to land in this area, where W.E. Bledsoe had already established a ranch. The small community became known as Becton, and this site served as a public cemetery. The first known burial took place in 1932, and the burial ground, maintained by Becton descendants, is active today. Graves include those of area veterans. The cemetery, surrounded by South Plains farmland, serves as a reminder of area settlers and the landscape they knew. Historic Texas Cemetery 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tennessee-born Abner Becton reached the Estacado area in the late 1890s, married Cornelia Bryant, and in 1898 settled on land near W.E. Bledsoe's ranch on the South Plains. The small community that grew up here took the Becton name, and this ground became its public cemetery, with the first known burial in 1932. Still active and cared for by Becton descendants, it stands amid the farmland that replaced the open range.
Why it matters
The cemetery marks the settlement of the Lubbock-area South Plains, where ranching gave way to farming at the turn of the 20th century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Abner M. Becton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Idalou Cemetery
Idalou, TX
As farming families broke the open prairie of the South Plains in the early 20th century, John William Turner, Jr. and his wife Mary Alice set aside two acres of their land as a burial ground in 1921 — its first grave a homemade marker for an infant nephew. A cemetery association formed by 1928, and decades of donated land and volunteer workdays shaped the site's curbed plots, upright shoulder stones, and native prairie plantings. It endures as a record of the generations who built Idalou.
The Battle of Blanco Canyon
Floydada, TX
By the 18th century the Comanche had made the canyons and plains of what became Floyd County their stronghold, dominating trade and warfare across Texas after pushing rival tribes south. In October 1871, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie led U.S. cavalry, guided by Tonkawa scouts, against the Kotsoteka and Quahadi bands who refused reservation life. In Blanco Canyon, Quanah Parker's warriors struck first and drove off the soldiers' horses; the fighting wounded both Mackenzie and Lieutenant Carter, and though the campaign frustrated the army, it began the destruction of Comanche power on the Southern Plains.
Coronado in Blanco Canyon
Floydada, TX
Between 1540 and 1542, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vazquez de Coronado led a vast expedition—more than a thousand people and thousands of animals—north from Mexico chasing rumors of golden cities. Their exact path across the southern plains has long puzzled historians, since surviving accounts are brief and contradictory. In the spring of 1541 the company camped in a wide canyon, and chain mail, crossbow points, and other European artifacts later unearthed around Blanco Canyon helped archaeologists confirm that Coronado passed this way.
Roots of the Catholic Faith in West Texas
Floydada, TX
The Catholic faith first reached this stretch of the South Plains with Coronado's 1540s search for the fabled cities of gold, when his men camped in nearby Blanco Canyon. Over the centuries the region passed through Mexican and then American church jurisdictions, and by the early 1900s priests were ministering to a growing flock of settlers and immigrants drawn by cheap land. Waves of newcomers from Mexico — during the Revolution and later through the Bracero labor program — fueled decades of church-building, culminating in the creation of the Diocese of Lubbock in 1983.