Desdemona Cemetery
Desdemona, Eastland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Desdemona was a well established frontier community by the 1870s; a post office opened there in 1877. J. S. and Rosa Jones deeded one acre from the D. W. Funderburgh land survey for a "public graveyard" in 1880. The earliest marked grave is that of William E. Wright (1815-1878). It is likely that older unmarked burials exist among the oak trees here. Native rocks incised with initials or dates mark some early graves. Those buried here include pioneer settlers and their descendants; frontier matriarch Mrs. Kate (Kizzie) Shuler; veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II; Capt. A. J. O'Rear, a county commissioner and postmaster; S. E. Snodgrass, a physician who served the area for 50 years; local citizens who profited from the 1918 oil boom; Joe and Almeda Duke, owners of the site of the first oil gusher; and many young children. In 1918-19 oil discoveries surrounded the cemetery with flowing wells and oil derricks. H. H. Williams' estate donated two acres of land in 1965. The Desdemona Cemetery association manages and maintains the site. The cemetery continues to serve the area as it has for more than a century. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Serving the frontier community of Desdemona since J. S. and Rosa Jones deeded an acre for a public graveyard in 1880, this cemetery holds pioneer settlers, Civil War and world-war veterans, a physician who served the area for fifty years, and children lost young. When oil gushers surrounded the grounds in 1918, the boom brought sudden wealth—and new residents—to the very families buried among its oaks.
Why it matters
From frontier hardship to the oil rush, the cemetery compresses the full arc of a North Central Texas community's history into a single sacred acre still in use after more than a century.
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Related people
- · William E. Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Merriman Cemetery
Ranger, TX
Begun around 1873 as a community graveyard just as Eastland County was organized, this cemetery holds early settlers, flu victims from the 1916–17 epidemic, and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Korea. The 1917 oil strike on nearby land triggered a boom, and speculators reportedly offered a large sum to lease the burial ground for drilling—an offer the local congregation refused, preserving the site's sanctity.
Desdemona First Baptist Church
Desdemona, TX
Nine charter members organized this Baptist congregation in 1872, beginning with brush-arbor meetings under the Spanish oaks along Hog Creek where the Rev. Johnnie Northcutt preached to settlers who came by wagon, horseback, and foot. First called Rockdale Baptist Church, it built a sanctuary in the village of Desdemona and took the town's name around 1877. When oil was discovered and Desdemona boomed by 1919, the congregation fled the crowded conditions to build a new home at this site in 1921–22.
William H. Pate
De Leon vicinity, TX
William H. Pate, a Georgia-born pioneer, was a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash in which Texian forces won independence from Mexico in a fight of less than twenty minutes. His grave marker, alongside that of his wife Jane, ties an ordinary Erath County family to one of the defining moments of the Texas Revolution.
Alameda Cemetery
Desdemona vicinity, TX
This burial ground began when pioneer William Mansker set aside part of his land for a school and community cemetery in the mid-19th century, serving Anglo settlers drawn together by the hardships of frontier Texas. Family clusters like the four Bell children who died in 1877, graves marked only by fieldstones, and the interment of veterans of several wars all testify to the precarious lives of those who built the Alameda community.