Cee Vee Cemetery
Paducah, Cottle County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Cee Vee community dates to 1926, with earlier ties to cattlemen Clairborne Varner and Charles Goodnight, who grazed herds in the area using the C V brand. As ranchland gave way to family farms, the community that developed here soon boasted a cotton gin, stores, churches and a school. Tradition holds the first grave at this prairie cemetery was that of a cowboy buried near the C V ranch house. The earliest marked grave is for Eugene Ballard, who died in 1931, the year W.J. Tyson donated land for the cemetery. In the 1950s, the Cee Vee Home Demonstration Club named the site Haven of Rest Cemetery. Citizens donated funds for a fence, and over the years burial sites have remained free. Graves include those of veterans of U.S. military service dating to World Wars I and II. Curbed plots enclose the burials of family members whose names reflect the early history of the area. Maintained by an association, Cee Vee Cemetery (Haven of Rest Cemetery) serves as an important link to the early history of this part of Cottle County. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Cee Vee community grew up around 1926 on land once grazed by cattlemen Clairborne Varner and Charles Goodnight, whose "C V" brand gave the place its name. As open range gave way to family farms, Cee Vee gained a cotton gin, stores, churches, and a school, while its prairie cemetery — tradition says it began with a cowboy buried near the old ranch house — took in the community's dead, including veterans of both World Wars. Renamed Haven of Rest by a local club in the 1950s, the burial ground is still tended by an association as a link to the area's ranching past.
Why it matters
Cee Vee captures the great Texas transition from cattle range to cotton farm, with the legendary Charles Goodnight's brand still echoing in the name of the community's resting place.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Charles Goodnight
- · Clairborne Varner
- · Eugene Ballard
- · W.J. Tyson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Tee Pee City
Matador, TX
In the 1870s, when the southern buffalo herd still darkened the plains of West Texas, traders threw up a rough camp of picket houses and tents where the Middle Pease River meets Tee Pee Creek, naming it for the abandoned tipi poles scattered along the water. Charles Rath and his partners hauled in wagons, cattle, and dance-hall gear to profit from the hide trade before moving on. As the hunters emptied the range, Tee Pee City settled into a hard-drinking outpost of saloons, gambling, and gunplay wild enough to draw the Texas Rangers, until the Matador Land and Cattle Company bought the land and shut the saloon in 1904.
Childress Cemetery
Childress, TX
Established in 1887, Childress Cemetery took shape just as the town and county were being organized on the newly opened plains of the Texas Panhandle. Its founding coincided with the arrival of railroads and settlers who transformed this open ranching country into farming and market communities in the late nineteenth century. The state's designation of it as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2008 recognizes it as a lasting record of those first residents.
Motley County Jail
Matador, TX
This two-story stone jail went up in 1891, the very year Motley County was organized on the rolling plains of the Texas Panhandle, built by local contractors under the county's first judge and commissioners. Cells filled the upper floor while the jailer and his family lived below. The county's first courthouse, raised the same year, later burned, leaving the jail as one of the oldest surviving symbols of the county's frontier beginnings.
Newlin Cemetery
Newlin, TX
Newlin is a tiny farming community on the rolling plains of Hall County, in the Texas Panhandle country that opened to Anglo settlement only after the buffalo and the Comanche were gone. Its cemetery, laid out in 1904, gathered the pioneer families who broke this cotton-and-cattle land in the early twentieth century. In 2009 the State of Texas recognized it as a Historic Texas Cemetery, protecting it as a record of the people who settled here.