Eakins Cemetery
Ponder, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Noah (1810-1868) and Susan (1816-1878) Eakins and their family came to this part of Denton County from Kentucky in 1855. This cemetery was established on their land about 1855-58 when a neighbor, Angelina Rayburn, was fatally burned while cooking on an open fire. Lula Q. Porter, infant child of another pioneer family, was buried in the graveyard in 1861, and the site became a community burial ground known as Eakins Cemetery. It is the final resting place of the Eakins family and many other area pioneers and their descendants. It continues to serve the rural community. (1995)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Noah and Susan Eakins brought their family from Kentucky to Denton County in 1855, part of the wave of settlers filling north Texas before the Civil War. The cemetery on their land began around 1855-58 with the burial of neighbor Angelina Rayburn, fatally burned cooking over an open fire, followed by an infant of another pioneer family in 1861. It grew into a community burial ground that still serves the rural area today.
Why it matters
It preserves the everyday hazards and tight-knit bonds of antebellum frontier settlement, where a neighbor's grave became the seed of a lasting community landmark.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Noah Eakins
- · Susan Eakins
- · Angelina Rayburn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ponder
Ponder, TX
Settlers drawn by rich farmland began arriving in western Denton County in the 1850s, among them Silas Christal, who built an ox-driven gristmill and, in 1880, a school. When the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway pushed a line toward Indian Territory in 1886, a town sprang up and was renamed Ponder for a prominent local landowner. Churches, stores, a cotton gin, and a bank clustered around the depot, and community traditions like the Ponder rodeo, begun in 1939, have carried the small town's spirit forward.
Justin
Justin, TX
The town of Justin sits where the Denton, Oliver, and Trail creeks meet in the North Texas prairie, long home to Native American peoples before white settlement. Its ground holds layered histories: the 1841 death of John B. Denton at the Village Creek Battle, an 1848 Icarian colony of French socialist immigrants that collapsed within two years, and Texas Ranger protection for settlers from Missouri and elsewhere. The town took its name from railroad engineer Walter Justin Sherman when the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway came through, and by 1914 it bustled with elevators, gins, and a flour mill.
Johns' Well and Campgrounds
Argyle, TX
In 1884 members of the Prairie Mound Methodist Church set aside this ground as a religious campground, its brush arbor sheltering worship during ten-day summer camp meetings. A dependable well—named for former owner Hardin Johns—drew not only campers but settlers and travelers passing through. As nearby communities built their own churches the meetings faded, and the land was sold in 1913, though the well served neighbors until 1963.
Graham-Argyle Cemetery
Argyle, TX
This burial ground served the farming community of Graham that grew here after the Civil War, its first known grave that of the infant George Isbell in December 1865. A nearby structure housed both a school and Graham Baptist Church. When settlers shifted to Argyle on the Texas and Pacific Railroad after 1881, the school and church followed, and the land was formally deeded for cemetery use in 1888; volunteers began restoring its roughly 238 graves in 1974.