Spade Community Cemetery
Colorado City, Mitchell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery began as a family graveyard on the farm of R.F. (1868-1927) and Addie (1872-1956) Hargrove, when their infant son died in April 1898. The Hargroves gave 2.5 acres of land surrounding their son's grave to the Spade Community for cemetery and school purposes. The community schoolhouse, originally called Liberty School, was used for numerous purposes, including funerals, grange meetings, church services, and community events. According to available oral history, the school building was located in the northeast corner of the cemetery property. The Ellwood-Renderbrook Spade Ranch, from which the community takes its name, adjoins the rural settlement on its southern boundary. From 1902 until 1912 a U.S. Post Office served the community; other businesses in the area included a cotton gin, a store, and a blacksmith shop. Since 1898 this graveyard has served as the sole burial ground for the farming and ranching community of Spade. Among the interments here are Hargrove family members; victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic; and veterans of the Civil War and World War II, including a member of the Women's Army Corps. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground began with heartbreak in April 1898, when R.F. and Addie Hargrove buried their infant son on their West Texas farm and then gave 2.5 acres to the surrounding Spade community for a cemetery and school. The little settlement that grew alongside the great Ellwood-Renderbrook Spade Ranch supported a schoolhouse, a post office, a cotton gin, a store, and a blacksmith. Among those laid to rest here are victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic and veterans of the Civil War and World War II, including a member of the Women's Army Corps.
Why it matters
It captures the full arc of a small farming-and-ranching community — birth, faith, epidemic, and military service — bound to one of the storied cattle ranches of the West Texas plains.
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Related people
- · R.F. Hargrove
- · Addie Hargrove
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Plainview Baptist Church
Colorado City, TX
Begun as a mission of the Spade community's Liberty Baptist Church, this fellowship was meeting in the Plainview Community Schoolhouse by 1906. On May 16, 1908, members gathered to organize an independent congregation, drawing leadership from the nearby Liberty church during its early years. The church went on to play an active role in the surrounding Mitchell County community.
The 96 Ranch
Colorado City, TX
In the late 1870s, cattlemen were the first wave to settle Mitchell County, and the 96 Ranch became one of its anchor spreads. Round Rock merchant James Durham Wulfjen caught ranch fever on an 1884 visit, filed on three sections along the Colorado River, and coaxed his wife Mary Jane from town comfort to a lonely cabin on an old buffalo hunter's camp. He registered the enduring "96" brand in 1885 and, with his sons, grew the outfit to more than 12,000 acres of fine Durham cattle and saddle horses. The Wulfjens also helped raise schools and a church, knitting a working ranch into a lasting community.
Site of Westbrook School and Church
Westbrook, TX
When Westbrook was still just a flag-stop on the Texas & Pacific line, settlers in 1890 built a single tiny, one-room structure to serve as both school and church. Pupils recited lessons from memory on a long "recitation bench," while on Sundays the Westbrook Baptist Church — organized that same year — held services and all-day gatherings that doubled as social occasions for scattered families. As the town grew, a separate church rose in 1902 and a two-story schoolhouse in 1905, and the old building was sold off as a barn.
Renderbrook Ranch
Westbrook, TX
Founded in the 1870s on the open range of West Texas, Renderbrook grew into a sprawling cattle operation that eventually covered well over a hundred thousand acres. In 1889 it passed to Isaac Ellwood, a partner in the barbed-wire industry that was fencing in the plains, who paid partly in wire and stocked the range with Spade-brand cattle. His heirs still run that brand, a rare thread of continuity from the era of the great ranches.