Kress Cemetery
Kress, Swisher County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery has served the community of Kress since 1907, shortly after residents of the town of Wright moved to this area when a railway was built here. F.T. Skipworth, a president of Farmers State Bank, deeded the land for cemetery use. The oldest known grave in the cemetery, that of Mary F. McMillam, dates to 1910. Since that time, many community leaders and residents of Kress, including bankers, real estate agents, ranchers and farmers, have been buried here. The Kress Cemetery Association, incorporated in 1945, maintains the cemetery, which continues to serve Kress and is a reminder of the pioneering men and women of this community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Kress Cemetery has served the High Plains community of Kress since 1907, when residents of the nearby town of Wright relocated after a railway was built through the area. Banker F.T. Skipworth deeded the land, and the oldest known grave, that of Mary F. McMillam, dates to 1910. Bankers, ranchers, farmers, and community leaders have been laid to rest here under the care of an association incorporated in 1945.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of the pioneering families who settled the Texas Panhandle as the railroads opened the plains to farming and ranching.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Kress Cemetery sits on the high, wind-swept tableland of the Texas Panhandle, and its beginnings in 1907 belong to one of the last great chapters of American frontier settlement. Well into the early twentieth century, the vast South Plains were still being opened to farming and ranching — and what opened them, more than anything else, was the railroad.
When a rail line was built through this area, it did what rail lines did all across the West: it decided which towns would live and which would fade. Residents of the nearby town of Wright picked up and moved to be near the tracks, and the community of Kress took shape around them. A cemetery followed almost immediately, as it always did, because a town that means to stay must have a place to bury its dead.
This was the Progressive era on the national calendar, but on the Panhandle it still carried the flavor of the frontier — new banks, new farms, new fences drawn across grassland that had lately been open range.
People & events
The land for the cemetery was given by F. T. Skipworth, a president of the Farmers State Bank — a fitting benefactor for a young farming town, where the bank was often the institution that turned a settlement into a going concern. His gift ensured that Kress would have consecrated ground of its own from the start.
The oldest known grave belongs to Mary F. McMillam and dates to 1910, only a few years after the cemetery was established. In the decades since, the ground has received a cross-section of the community that built the town: bankers and real estate agents, ranchers and farmers — the very trades by which a Panhandle town made its living.
In 1945 residents incorporated the Kress Cemetery Association to maintain the site, and it continues that work today. Each name here is a thread in the fabric of a pioneering community, and together they tell the story of the men and women who chose to make a home on the open plains.
Its place in the American story
The settling of the Great Plains is one of the defining movements in American history, and few things capture it as vividly as a small-town cemetery that begins the moment the railroad arrives. The story of Kress — a town that formed when people relocated to meet the tracks — is the story of the West in miniature, repeated at hundreds of whistle-stops across the region.
It is also a reminder of how thoroughly the railroads reshaped the map. They did not simply serve existing towns; they created and erased them, drawing communities toward the rails like iron filings toward a magnet. The people of Wright who resettled to become the people of Kress lived that transformation firsthand.
And in the trades represented among these graves — the banker who gave the land, the ranchers and farmers who worked it — you can read the economic engine of the frontier plains: agriculture and finance, grit and capital, combining to turn grassland into a settled home.
If you visit
A Panhandle cemetery has a particular feel — big sky, long horizons, and a quiet broken mostly by wind — and Kress Cemetery offers exactly that. Visit respectfully, and take a moment with the older markers, including Mary F. McMillam's grave from 1910, to sense just how young this community was when it began laying its people to rest.
As you read the stones, notice how they gather up a whole town: the bankers, the ranchers, the farmers who made a living from this demanding land. The care of the grounds reflects generations of work by the Kress Cemetery Association, so leave the site as peaceful as you found it.
If you're driving the wide roads of the South Plains, this is the kind of stop that puts the region's history in your hands. Standing here, with the plains rolling out in every direction, it isn't hard to imagine the determination it took to move a town toward a new railroad and build a lasting community on the open frontier.
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
- · F.T. Skipworth
Themes & tags
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