Ross Cemetery

Baird, TX

After the Callahan County seat moved from Belle Plain to Baird in 1883, a succession of noted architects left their mark here — F.E. Ruffini on the first courthouse, J. Riely Gordon on a larger 1900 building, and finally Voelcker & Dixon on the Classical Revival courthouse completed in 1929. Adorned with acanthus leaves, rosettes, medallions, and cartouches, the current building was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2003.

Moran, TX

After Hulltown—later Moran—was founded in 1883, the community elected trustees who in 1896 bought two-and-a-third acres for a public burial ground, the oldest marked grave being that of Lucy Brazell Snider. Over the following decades the cemetery grew to hold more than 1,800 people, including town pioneers and many military veterans, and a native-stone boundary fence was built in 1933 with Depression relief funds. A cemetery association formed in 1926 still maintains the grounds.

Callahan County, TX

Old Cottonwood Cemetery grew alongside a Callahan County community founded on land granted to George Washington Glasscock, Sr. for his service to the Republic of Texas. Homesteaders arrived in the 1870s to good farming country, and the town of Cottonwood soon boasted businesses, churches, an academy, and two newspapers. The graveyard — its earliest known burials infants from 1877 — holds veterans dating to the Texas War for Independence and even two friends who killed each other in a frontier gunfight and share a common grave.

Abilene, TX

Thomas Middlebrook Willis came west in the late 1870s to size up the open range and, after finishing law school in Tennessee, settled in the raw new town of Abilene in 1883. He built a family and a practice there, served as city attorney and city judge, and helped steer the young community through its formative years. Decades later, the local paper counted him among the founders of the city.