Announcement of a New Cemetery Blog

Effective today, posts previously published on The Graveyard Rabbit of the Covered Bridges can be read on my new blog, Cemeteries with Texas Ties.

At Cemeteries with Texas Ties I will depict small country cemeteries in North Texas with occasional posts about larger, city cemeteries found wherever my travels take me in my home state of Texas.

My focus will be photographs of these cemeteries and the area surrounding them, pictures of unusual gravestones and the not-so-unusual, and the information transcribed on them. I will also write an occasional story about some of the individuals buried there.

If you have an ancestor buried in one of these old cemeteries, I would be more than happy to publish your photos and information about that individual, citing you as the source, in the hopes that you may connect with a distant relative. Your comments and suggestions will always be welcome.

My blog about my family lines of Shubert and Richards and their extended lines can still be found at Genealogy Traces.

Please join me there, in the Cemeteries with Texas Ties.

Tombstone Tuesday - January 20, 2009

C. H. TRICE, SR.

Sept. 12, 1835
Aug. 12, 1921

TRICE

Order of Freemasons Symbol

West End Cemetery
Lingleville, Erath County, Texas

Tombstone Tuesday - January 6, 2009

Dorthy Spencer Emery

"At Rest"
Located in the Ramsey Historical Cemetery
Erath County, Texas

I looked for another marker near her but could find none.

General H. B. Granbury & Southern Cross of Honor

Granbury is one of the loveliest small towns in the state of Texas. It has a long history dating back to 1866 with many residents of importance. The large Granbury Cemetery is located north of the main courthouse square on Moore Street and Hwy. 51 North. In 2001 the Texas Historical Commission erected an historical marker that reads in part:

“Granbury Cemetery. Part of an original school land survey, this parcel was already known as ‘the cemetery lot’ when deeded to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1855 for use as a public burial ground.”

The thought crossed my mind that maybe it, too, has spirits attending the graves. As I wrote in my post about Ghosts in Lower School Hill Cemetery, if Dave Julian of “The Shadowlands” is to be believed, that “former school sites may have a buildup of psychic energies of emotional events having previously transpired there” and “is an open invitation to spirits”, then it seems to me the Granbury Cemetery would fit in that category nicely.

Some gravemarkers pre-date the 1866 founding of the city, the earliest being the one for John Edwards (1790-1853). At one time the Methodist Church was located on the courthouse square and graves from their churchyard were moved to the new location; it is, therefore, “difficult to know whether some burials were original to the site or were reinterments.”

In 1873, a high school was built on the property which fourteen years later became Granbury College. After the college closed, the church deeded the school land to the city in 1915 and College Hill was allowed full usage as a cemetery.

Today you can still see the Granbury Courthouse in the distance and part of Lake Granbury around which the town is built. The lichgate opens to Moore Street and looks out toward the courthouse.

Many veterans of our wars have their final resting place in Granbury Cemetery. A veteran of the War of 1812, John Bennett Dickson, is at rest here, as well as veterans from the U. S.-Mexico War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

A Mississippian, Hiram B. Granbury, came to Texas in the early 1850s. He practiced law in the town of Waco, some 95 miles southeast of Granbury, and joined the Confederacy in 1861. He is noted for his command of the combined forces which made up Granbury’s Texas Brigade. He was one of six Confederate Generals killed at Franklin, Tennessee.

With a Southern Cross of Honor placed between the gravemarkers, his wife, Fannie Sims Granbury, is memorialized beside her husband in this cemetery that bears his name. The city’s namesake, Hiram B. Granbury (1831 – 1864) was reinterred here in 1893.

Southern Cross of Honor Symbol

BRIG GEN

HIRAM B GRANBURY

GRANBURY’S TX BRIGADE

CSA

Mar. 1, 1831

Nov. 30, 1864

KIA

Franklin, Tennessee

Wife of

HIRAM B. GRANBURY

FANNIE SIMS GRANBURY

Born 1833

Died Mar.20, 1863

Married 1858

Waco, TX

Buried in an Unmarked Grave

Magnolia Cemetery

Mobile, AL

Thanks to

Rebecca Drake, Historian

Mary E. Johnson, Researcher

Jane Embrose, Family Descendant

This Memorial Stone

Placed by the Hood County

Historical Society

2003

A two-sided, cast iron replica of the medal awarded by the Confederate States of America for loyal and honorable service to the South, it stands atop a metal rod placed into the ground at the veteran’s grave. “It is sometimes referred to as the “Iron Cross of Honor” or “SCV Iron Cross”. It is typically placed on Confederate graves by local chapters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans or by family members or interested parties related to the Confederate Veteran. The iron cross version of the SCH is available for purchase through several SCV chapters as well as several private foundries throughout the United States. The grave of any Confederate Veteran who served honorably is eligible for placement of this symbol.”

Other photos from Granbury Cemetery are below.

As I looked southeast toward the courthouse General Granbury and his wife's graves are in the second curbed plot in this picture.

Sources:

The Texas Historical Commission

Terry Thornton, The Graveyard Rabbit of the Hill Country

Stephanie Lincecum of Southern Graves

"Ghosts in the Graveyard, Texas Cemetery Tales," 2002, Olyve Hallmark Abbott, Accessed 2008, North Richland Hills Public Library.

Granbury Cemetery, Moore Street and Hwy 51, North, Granbury, Texas

All pictures taken by Judith Richards Shubert, copyright 2008

Granbury Cemetery, Granbury, Texas

The Proximidade Award

I received a nice surprise today when Kathryn Doyle of California Genealogical Society and Library and Cheryle Hoover Davis of Surnames and Hernames - A Genealogy Blog awarded my blogs, Genealogy Traces and The Graveyard Rabbit of the Covered Bridges, the Proximidade Award. Thanks so much, Kathryn and Cheryle! I'm honored.

The blogs who receive the Proximidade Award invest and believe in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers, who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

Here are eight blogs I've begun following and on whom I wish to bestow this award:
Bluebonnet Country Genealogy by Ruth Stephens
Gramma's House by Becky Jamison
Obituaries and the Stories They don't Tell by Linda Stienstra
Before My Time by TK Sand
Creative Gene by Jasia Smasha
Spence-Lowry Family History by A. Spence
I Dream of Genea(logy) by Amir Dekel
Amy's Genealogy, etc. Blog by Amy Johnson Crow
Gtownma's Genealogy by Tina Sansone

I'm leaving a note on each of their latest posts. If you haven't discovered these fantastic folks, now's your chance!