Black Springs Cemetery
Oran, Palo Pinto County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(220 yards east) Originally known as the Black Springs Cemetery, the nearby burial ground was established to serve pioneer settlers of the Keechi Valley and the settlement of Black Springs. The earliest marked grave is that of Mary A. Lasater (1841-1871). Land for the cemetery was deeded by Silas Adam Sheek, stepfather of the noted Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight. Renamed Oran Cemetery when a new community name was selected in 1886, it includes the graves of Goodnight's mother Charlotte Sheek (1810-1882), Civil War veterans, pioneer settlers and early community leaders. (1982)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established for the pioneers of the Keechi Valley and the settlement of Black Springs, this burial ground holds the earliest marked grave of Mary A. Lasater (1841–1871). The land was given by Silas Adam Sheek, stepfather of the great Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight, and among those buried here is Goodnight's mother, Charlotte Sheek, alongside Civil War veterans and early community leaders. It was renamed Oran Cemetery when the town took its new name in 1886.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a roll call of the people who settled North Texas — cattle-country families, veterans, and the kin of frontier legends — gathered in the ground they broke.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before the Civil War, the Keechi Valley of Palo Pinto County sat on the raw western edge of settled Texas. Texas had joined the Union only in 1845. Through the 1850s, families pushed up the river valleys of North Central Texas looking for good grass, clear water and land they could claim. They built log cabins, ran cattle on open range and lived with the constant uncertainty of a frontier still contested with the Comanche and other Native nations.
In a place like that, a burial ground was one of the first things a community needed and one of the last things anyone wanted to plan. Black Springs grew up as one of these small settlements, and the cemetery that served it recorded the people who stayed through droughts, raids, war and the hard work of turning prairie into farms and ranches.
The Civil War and Reconstruction reshaped this country. Many frontier men went off to serve, and the counties they left behind were thinly defended. After the war, cattle became the region's great economic hope, and the trails and ranches of North Texas started feeding the rest of the nation. By 1886, when the community picked a new name and the burial ground became Oran Cemetery, the rough frontier years were giving way to a settled rural life.
People & events
The earliest marked grave belongs to Mary A. Lasater, born in 1841 and gone by 1871, when she was about thirty. The stone tells us only that much, but it is a fair reminder that pioneer life was hard on young women. Childbirth, illness and isolation took many of them long before old age. Hers is the oldest name still readable here, which does not mean it was the first burial. Frontier graves were often marked with wood or fieldstone that did not last.
The land itself came from Silas Adam Sheek, and that connects this quiet hillside to one of the most famous names in Western history. Sheek was the stepfather of Charles Goodnight. Goodnight came to Texas as a boy with his family and grew up to become one of the great cattlemen of the American West. He helped blaze the cattle trail known by his name and that of his partner Oliver Loving, and he later built a vast ranching operation in the Texas Panhandle.
Goodnight's mother, Charlotte Sheek, lies here too. She lived from 1810 to 1882, long enough to see the son she brought to the Texas frontier become a legend. Around her rest Civil War veterans, pioneer settlers and early community leaders. Very few of them made the history books, but together they made this community.
Its place in the American story
Frontier history often gets told through its famous figures: trail drivers, lawmen, cattle barons. Oran Cemetery is a reminder that every legend had a family and a home place. Charles Goodnight's story, which reaches from the cattle trails to the Panhandle ranges, is rooted in small settlements like this one, where his mother and stepfather put down roots and gave land so their neighbors could bury their dead.
The mix of graves here reflects the wider American experience of the era. Civil War veterans point to a conflict that reached even the thinly settled edge of the country. Pioneer families stand for the westward movement that pulled millions of Americans onto new ground in the nineteenth century. The 1886 renaming shows how these communities kept reinventing themselves as railroads, post offices and new settlers arrived.
Rural cemeteries are among the most honest records the frontier left behind. Unlike newspapers or official reports, they include everyone: the young mother, the old veteran, the landowner and the neighbor. Reading those stones is a way of reading the whole story of how a region was settled.
If you visit
The marker notes that the cemetery itself lies a short distance east, about 220 yards, so give yourself a few minutes to walk over. Please treat it as the sacred ground it is. Stay on paths where they exist, step carefully around older stones, and leave everything as you found it.
Look for the oldest markers and the dates on them. The graves from the 1870s and 1880s, including Charlotte Sheek's, speak to the frontier generation. Veterans' stones and family plots show how the community grew over the decades after. Weathered and hand-cut stones can say as much as polished granite does.
Palo Pinto County is rolling, rugged country, and it pairs well with a drive across North Central Texas. If Charles Goodnight's story draws you in, this stop makes a meaningful starting point for tracing the cattle-country history that later carried his name across the Southwest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Mary A. Lasater
- · Silas Adam Sheek
- · Charles Goodnight
- · Charlotte Sheek
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alfred Lane
Graford, TX
Tennessee-born Alfred Lane came to Texas with his family in 1836 and settled in Robertson's colony before moving to the Black Springs area of Palo Pinto County in 1856, where he raised horses on the open range after marrying Elizabeth Goodnight. Brother-in-law to the famed cattleman Charles Goodnight, who called him "a splendid brave man," Lane scouted for the Texas Rangers during the Civil War and helped drive Goodnight's cattle west of Fort Belknap. He was killed by Indians while returning home and lies buried in nearby Crawford Cemetery.
Reuben Vaughan
Graford, TX
Alabama-born Reuben Vaughan migrated to Texas in 1852 and in 1854 brought his family to this area as the first permanent settlers in present Palo Pinto County, raising a cabin of cedar and stone. A farmer and stock raiser who kept friendly relations with the region's Indian tribes, he served in a frontier battalion protecting settlements during the Civil War and lies buried in this family cemetery.
Jonathan Hamilton Baker
Palo Pinto, TX
Virginia-born Jonathan Hamilton "Ham" Baker reached Texas in 1858 and settled in Palo Pinto County, where he opened what is believed to be its first organized school and helped found its first Methodist church. On the exposed frontier he led local defenders against Comanche raids, rode with Lawrence Sullivan Ross in the 1860 recovery of Cynthia Ann Parker, and captained the home guard during the Civil War. He was also a trail-driving cattleman and tireless local officeholder whose decades-long diary preserves a vivid record of frontier Texas.
James B. Dosher
Jacksboro, TX
James B. Dosher came to Texas in 1847 and rode with the Texas Rangers on the unsettled northern frontier before farming in Jack County. His life traced the arc of a hard border era, from Ranger companies to service with Confederate and Texas State forces during the Civil War. In 1870 he was scouting for the U.S. Army as a civilian guide when his gallantry at Bluff Creek earned him the Medal of Honor.