Merit Cemetery
Merit, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The 1870 U.S. Census lists most area settlers as farmers from the Upland South. One such family was that of Dr. Alexander Murchison, who arrived from Polk County, Georgia. Through his efforts the Methodist Church organized in Apr. 1871. In the 1870s, Judge William W. Merritt's visit and speech so impressed residents that they found their town namesake (later shortened to Merit). A post office opened in 1884 and the railroad arrived in 1886, stimulating cotton production and helping stores, fraternal lodges and a newspaper to begin operations. A bank opened in 1904; in Nov. 1912, robbers drove away with $4,500 by blasting open the bank vault with nitroglycerin. A 1921 fire, the Great Depression, and World War II led to a population drop which recent suburban growth has reversed. In Oct. 1907, Dr. Murchison and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, deeded 15 acres atop a rise to the Odd Fellows Lodge for a community cemetery. An open-air wooden tabernacle was built soon after. Cemetery care transferred in 1947 to the Farmersville Odd Fellows Lodge, and in 1952 to the Merit Cemetery Association, who holds an annual meeting on Memorial Day. Merit Cemetery is one of the few in Hunt County with swept graves. Headstones are primarily granite, marble and limestone, and historic plantings include roses, irises, crape myrtles and evergreens. The oldest grave (1882) is the infant son of J.D. and L.E. Lawrence. The influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 caused many deaths. Military veterans date from the Civil War to the Vietnam War, and there are numerous Woodmen of the World, Odd Fellows and Masonic tombstones, used by longtime families and newcomers. The cemetery is the link between modern Merit and past generations who farmed the surrounding rolling Blackland Prairie. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2009
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Merit began as an Upland South farming settlement on the rolling Blackland Prairie of Hunt County, its Methodist congregation organized in 1871 and its name drawn from a visiting judge, William W. Merritt. The railroad's arrival in 1886 spurred cotton, stores, lodges, and a newspaper — and in 1912 robbers famously blew the bank vault open with nitroglycerin for $4,500. The community cemetery, deeded by Dr. Alexander Murchison in 1907, still holds veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam and is one of the county's few surviving swept-grave burial grounds.
Why it matters
Merit and its cemetery trace the full life cycle of a Texas prairie farm town — settlement, railroad-driven cotton boom, Depression-era decline, and suburban revival — while its swept graves preserve a vanishing Southern folk tradition of cemetery care.
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Related people
- · Dr. Alexander Murchison
- · William W. Merritt
Related events
- · Merit bank robbery, 1912
Themes & tags
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