Roberts Branch Cemetery
Jacksboro, Jack County, Texas
Marker Inscription
DURING THE EARLY 1870s, A SMALL SETTLEMENT BEGAN TO GROW IN THIS AREA, ALONG THE ROBERTS BRANCH, A TRIBUTARY OF THE WEST FORK OF THE TRINITY RIVER. THE CREEK HAD BEEN NAMED BY SETTLERS AFTER TEXAS SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE AND FUTURE GOVERNOR ORAN MILO ROBERTS VISITED THE AREA ON A GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN STOP PRIOR TO HIS 1878 ELECTION. MOST OF THE EARLY FAMILIES ASSOCIATED WITH THE ROBERTS BRANCH COMMUNITY WERE RANCHERS OR SHARECROPPERS, WHILE A FEW WORKED AT THE NEARBY BRANUM COAL MINE. THE OLDEST PORTION OF ROBERTS BRANCH CEMETERY CONSISTS OF A CLUSTER OF GRAVES AROUND THE FIRST KNOWN BURIAL—AN UNKNOWN COWBOY WHO DIED DRIVING CATTLE THROUGH THE AREA DURING THE EARLY 1870s. THESE ORIGINAL GRAVEMARKERS WERE MADE OF UNMARKED SANDSTONE. THE EARLIEST MARKED GRAVE IS DATED 1881, AND BELONGS TO THE INFANT GRANDDAUGHTER OF MEDDIE AND PINEY WHITE. THE BURIAL GROUND IS ALSO THE FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR OVER TWENTY U.S. SERVICE MEMBERS, INCLUDING VETERANS OF THE CIVIL WAR, WORLD WAR II, THE KOREAN WAR, AND THE VIETNAM WAR. AN ANNUAL CEMETERY CLEAN UP DAY HAS TAKEN PLACE EACH SPRING SINCE THE LATE 1890s, AND A FALL WORK DAY WAS ADDED DURING THE 1930s. IN 1950, ADDIE (MRS. W.H.) SMITH OFFICIALLY DEEDED THE CEMETERY PROPERTY TO THE ROBERTS BRANCH CEMETERY ASSOCIATION. AN ADDITIONAL .53 ACRE WAS DONATED BY SMITH FAMILY DESCENDANTS IN 2003. TODAY, ROBERTS BRANCH CEMETERY STANDS AS A REMINDER OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF THE ROBERTS BRANCH COMMUNITY, WHILE ALSO CONTINUING TO SERVE THE NEEDS OF THEIR DESCENDANTS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As settlers pushed into North Texas in the early 1870s, a small ranching and sharecropping community took root along Roberts Branch, a Trinity River tributary named for a visiting Texas jurist who would soon be governor. The oldest graves here cluster around an unknown cowboy who died on a cattle drive, marked at first only by rough sandstone; the earliest dated stone belongs to an infant from 1881. Tended each spring since the 1890s, the ground also holds more than twenty veterans spanning the Civil War through Vietnam.
Why it matters
A working frontier cemetery like this preserves the everyday people—drovers, ranchers, and their descendants—whose labor built rural Texas but who rarely appear in grander histories.
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Related people
- · Oran Milo Roberts
- · Addie Smith
Themes & tags
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