Eller Flat Cemetery
Canadian, Hemphill County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Also known as Prairie Dell Cemetery, this burial ground has served eastern Hemphill county since 1895, when Dora Calhoun, an infant, was interred here. George W. Little, a landowner in the then-thriving Eller Flat community, donated property for her gravesite. Charles H. and Jesse Rutter purchased Little’s land in 1905, and continued to allow community residents to use the burial ground. In 1912, the Eller Flat Cemetery Association purchased this property, which contained about 35 graves. By 1917, residents built Prairie Dell School (0.7 mi. W), which became associated with the cemetery. Today, Eller Flat (Prairie Dell) Cemetery continues to serve area residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2008
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Also known as Prairie Dell Cemetery, this burial ground has served eastern Hemphill County since 1895, when the infant Dora Calhoun was laid to rest on land donated by George W. Little. Later owners continued to allow the community to use the grounds until the Eller Flat Cemetery Association bought the property in 1912. A nearby schoolhouse, built in 1917, tied the cemetery to the everyday life of the Prairie Dell settlement.
Why it matters
Cemetery and schoolhouse together record how scattered Panhandle homesteaders knit themselves into communities, marking both the beginnings and endings of frontier life.
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Related people
- · Dora Calhoun
- · George W. Little
- · Charles H. Rutter
- · Jesse Rutter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cataline Cemetery
Canadian, TX
The Cataline community took root in the Texas Panhandle before Hemphill County was even organized, its settlers raising the county's first school in 1885 and its first church in 1887. When infant Emma Turner died in 1896, mourners chose a hill overlooking the Washita valley for her grave, and the Methodist Episcopal Church soon bought three acres to formalize the burial ground. With nine of its graves belonging to children under a year old, the cemetery is a quiet testament to the hardships of remote frontier life—and the last surviving trace of a vanished community.
Former Site of Hogtown
Canadian, TX
Hogtown sprang up in 1886 as a tent city for the railroad gang laying the Southern Kansas line, earning its unflattering name from its rough, hogpen appearance. It was the forerunner of the town of Canadian, but when the landowner Sam Pollard and the railroad could not agree on a price for his land, the company simply moved the line across the river—and the people followed. The tent town was left behind, one of the West's many settlements that lived and died with the rails.
Glazier Cemetery
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Glazier sprang up in 1887 when the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway reached the site, becoming a handy cattle-shipping point north of the flood-prone Canadian River. The Glazier Cemetery Association bought its ground in 1910, though the earliest burials date to 1906. The town endured hard blows—a 1916 fire that leveled its business district and a 1947 tornado that killed twelve—yet the cemetery still marks the community's history.
Gageby Cemetery
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As settlers filtered into this corner of the Texas Panhandle around 1900, the little community of Gageby took shape with a school and other services. A local couple donated three acres for a cemetery in 1944, and the husband, who died soon after, became its first burial. The ground holds the teachers, veterans, and civic leaders who anchored the community.