Trimble Cemetery
Decatur, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
TRIMBLE CEMETERY TRIMBLE CEMETERY WAS THE MAIN BURIAL GROUND USED BY THE RESIDENTS OF THE TINY COMMUNITY OF FLATWOOD (ALSO KNOWN AS DAVIS CITY) THAT EXISTED DURING THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY. THE CEMETERY IS NAMED FOR AN EARLY OWNER OF THE PROPERTY, JAMES W. TRIMBLE, WHO PURCHASED LAND INCLUDING THE CEMETERY SITE IN 1877. IN 1921, B.F. WALKER AND W.S. SMITH EACH DEEDED A SMALL PORTION OF THEIR LAND TO FORMALLY ESTABLISH THE THREE-ACRE TRIMBLE CEMETERY. THE EARLIEST MARKED GRAVES IN THE CEMETERY ARE THOSE OF ONE-YEAR-OLD OLLIE M. RUCKER AND SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD BENJAMIN J. BROWN, WHO BOTH DIED IN 1877. THE CEMETERY SERVES AS A RECORD OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF THE DAVIS CITY AND FLATWOOD COMMUNITIES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2008
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Trimble Cemetery served the tiny late-nineteenth-century community of Flatwood, also called Davis City, and takes its name from landowner James W. Trimble, who bought the ground in 1877. Its earliest marked graves—a one-year-old and a sixteen-year-old, both dying in 1877—date the burial ground to the community's first years. Formalized as a three-acre cemetery in 1921, it endures as one of the few remaining traces of a settlement that has otherwise vanished.
Why it matters
Rural cemeteries like this are often the last physical record of vanished frontier communities, preserving the names and losses of the settlers who built early Texas.
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Related people
- · James W. Trimble
- · Ollie M. Rucker
- · Benjamin J. Brown
Themes & tags
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