Funeral Business in Clarendon
Clarendon, Donley County, Texas
Marker Inscription
For more than a century, this site has been the location of a funeral home, a vital community business serving a widespread area of the Panhandle. Kentucky native Pleasant Andrew Buntin (1849-1941) brought his family to Texas in 1879, settling first in Mobeetie (Wheeler Co.). The Buntins moved to Clarendon in 1888 following the arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. P.A. Buntin rode a mail route from there through Palo Duro Canyon and Schott Gap (Briscoe Co.) to the Caprock, changing wagons and horses to make the 60-mile round trip in a single day. Buntin also operated a dairy, and he was a charter member of the Methodist church and the Masonic lodge in Clarendon. At this site in 1899, Buntin established a funeral home, one of the earliest in the Texas Panhandle. He and his wife, Lucy Jane (Gibbs), had four children, and their youngest son Fred continued in the family business. Fred attended Clarendon College and the Dallas School of Embalming, and joined his father's company in 1919. The business territory covered several counties, and notable early burials conducted by the family included pioneer ranchers Charles and Mary Ann (Dyer) Goodnight in the 1920s. During World War II, the civic-minded Buntin Funeral Home provided military service plaques -- with blue stars for active personnel and gold stars for casualties -- for families to display in the windows of their homes. The Buntins sold the business in 1945, although the family name remained in use with others for several years. A number of families have since been associated with the historic operation, including, from 1977, the Robertsons, who for a short time owned another funeral parlor in Clarendon. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For over a century this site has held a funeral home serving a wide stretch of the Texas Panhandle. Kentucky native Pleasant Andrew Buntin brought his family to Texas in 1879 and, after the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad reached Clarendon, established the business here in 1899—one of the earliest in the region. His son Fred, trained at the Dallas School of Embalming, carried it on, and the family conducted burials across several counties, including that of famed rancher Charles Goodnight in the 1920s.
Why it matters
The enterprise illustrates how railroads and family businesses knit together the sparsely settled Panhandle into functioning communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Texas Panhandle came late to settlement, and when it came, it came by rail. Through the 1870s this was open range — vast, thinly peopled grassland where distances were measured in days on horseback. The arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad in the late 1880s changed everything, threading a lifeline of commerce and people across country that had been all but roadless.
Clarendon grew up in that transformation, straddling the line between the frontier era and the modern age it was about to enter. A town on the rail line could support the kinds of enterprises a scattered ranching population had always needed but rarely had close at hand — banks, churches, lodges, stores, and the services that mark a settled community.
Among those services was one every community requires but few like to dwell on: the care of the dead. In a region where the nearest town might be sixty miles off, a dependable funeral business served an enormous territory, knitting far-flung families into a single community at the moments they most needed one another.
People & events
Pleasant Andrew Buntin, born in Kentucky in 1849, brought his family to Texas in 1879 and settled first at Mobeetie in Wheeler County. In 1888, following the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad, the Buntins moved to Clarendon. Buntin was the kind of tireless frontier figure the era ran on: he rode a punishing mail route from Clarendon through Palo Duro Canyon and Schott Gap to the Caprock, changing wagons and horses to cover the sixty-mile round trip in a single day. He also ran a dairy and helped charter both the local Methodist church and the Masonic lodge.
In 1899 he opened a funeral home on this site — one of the earliest in the Panhandle. His youngest son, Fred, carried the trade forward, studying at Clarendon College and the Dallas School of Embalming before joining the family firm in 1919. Their work reached across several counties. Among the notable services the family conducted were the burials, in the 1920s, of the pioneer rancher Charles Goodnight and his wife, Mary Ann (Dyer) Goodnight — a fitting connection between the region's most storied cattleman and the family that laid so many of its people to rest.
The firm's civic character showed most plainly during World War II, when the Buntin Funeral Home provided families with service plaques to display in their windows — blue stars for loved ones serving, gold stars for those who did not come home. The Buntins sold the business in 1945, though the name lingered for years, and a succession of families, including the Robertsons from 1977, carried the operation on.
Its place in the American story
This site distills a truth about how the American West was actually built. We remember the railroads and the great ranches, but a functioning community also depended on humbler institutions — the store, the bank, the church, and the undertaker — usually run by families who stayed for generations. The Buntins embody that continuity: a business rooted in one place for more than a century, passed from father to son and then to other local hands.
The wartime service plaques speak to something national, too. Across the country, families hung service flags with blue and gold stars in their windows, turning a private grief or pride into a visible thread in the fabric of the home front. That a Panhandle funeral home supplied them shows how even the most remote American towns were woven into the great shared experience of the Second World War.
And the link to Charles Goodnight anchors the site in the epic of the cattle frontier. When the family that helped bury one of the West's legendary ranchers is the same family that supplied a town's window stars a generation later, you can see the whole arc of a region's history — from open range to modern nation — running through one doorway.
If you visit
Stand at this corner and think about what it has witnessed: more than a hundred years of a single kind of service to the same stretch of country. Few sites let you feel institutional continuity the way a place like this can, where the same purpose has been carried on by one family and then another across the generations.
Let the distances the marker describes sink in. Buntin's sixty-mile round trip through Palo Duro Canyon in a single day, changing horses along the way, tells you everything about how vast and demanding this country was before modern roads. The territory this business served spanned several counties — an ordinary reach in the Panhandle, extraordinary anywhere else.
Clarendon makes a rewarding stop on a Panhandle road trip, especially if you pair it with the dramatic scenery of nearby Palo Duro Canyon country. As you explore the town, notice how much of its story is one of steady, unglamorous institution-building — the banks, churches, and family firms that turned open range into a lasting community. This marker is a good place to begin reading that story.
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
- · Pleasant Andrew Buntin
- · Fred Buntin
- · Charles Goodnight
Related events
- · Arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad
Themes & tags
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