Merit Cemetery

The 1870 U.S. Census lists most settlers in the area as farmers from the upland South, including the family of Dr. Alexander Murchiso, who arrived from Polk County, Georgia. Through his efforts, the Methodist church organized in Apr. 1871. In the 1870s, a visit and speech by Judge William W. Merritt so impressed residents that they adopted their town namesake, later shortened to Merit. A post office opened in 1884 and the railroad arrived in 1886, stimulating cotton production and helping stores, fraternal lodges, and a newspaper begin operations. A bank opened in 1904, and in Nov. 1912 robbers used nitroglycerin to blast open the vault and escape with $4,500. A 1921 fire, the Great Depression, and World War II led to a population decline that recent suburban growth has reversed. In Oct. 1907, Dr. Murchison and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, deeded 15 acres on a rise to the Odd Fellows lodge for a community cemetery, and an open-air wooden tabernacle was built soon afterward. Care of the cemetery passed in 1947 to the Farmersville Odd Fellows lodge and in 1952 to the Merit cemetery association, which holds an annual Memorial Day meeting. The cemetery is one of the few in Hunt County with swept graves, and its headstones are primarily granite, marble, and limestone, with historic plantings of roses, irises, crape myrtles, and evergreens. Its oldest grave, dating to 1882, is that of the infant son of J. D. and L. E. Lawrence. The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 caused many deaths, and military veterans buried there date from the Civil War to the Vietnam War, alongside numerous Woodmen of the World, Odd Fellows, and Masonic tombstones. Used by longtime families and newcomers, the cemetery links modern Merit with past generations who farmed the surrounding rolling blackland prairie.

Texas · United States