Coats Cemetery

I took these photos of Coats Graveyard in Rains County on March 25, 2003.
The White Iris flowers cover the ground each spring for about two weeks.  I am probably the only person who sees them bloom each year. (MC)

Emory,  Rains County, Cemeteries of Texas

By Mickey Cooper

Submitted with permission by Elaine Bay Nall

Graveyards exist with different personalities.  As you walk thru some you feel a sense of peace and grace.  In others you feel cold and wish for a sweater.  The most interesting, is the one left behind when the community is dead and gone and the cemetery is the only living reminder left to tell the forgotten story.  

Texas has a vast and forgotten legacy, living only by graves left in the corners and fencerows of ancient cemeteries.  Many of these graves are marked by one or two formal tombstones or rocks, leaving dozens of sunken spaces unmarked, without friend or mourner.  A discerning eye can sometimes detect them, in the spring of the year, by the tell tale signs of flowers blooming out of underground bulbs, planted more than a hundred years ago.  Flowers planted by a Civil War widow or those once grown and tended to by the children of a slave.  Each bloom in the spring speaks of the love and loss by families of a whole community.  Communities that were connected by life and death, across the line of skin pigments.  Communities that encouraged individual achievement and cautioned against wholesale acceptance of outsiders.

Those cemeteries at the backside of a pasture reflect the character and strength of people who lived each day without our modern daydreams or misplaced ideas of organic and natural.  A cold and solid stone, with a chiseled epitaph, reveals a clue about family wealth and morals. Cemeteries are not for the dead or dying.  They are living and changing every year.  They may disappear from one generation, but they are recreated by the next.  They exist because man demands proof of eternity.  They disappear because man recognizes eternity.

My Daddy had a disdain for 'end of the road cemeteries'.  He expressed a preference for graveyards that were near town and located on well traveled roads.  He grew up tending to his own Father's grave.  A distinct disadvantage for a boy at the age of eleven.  Unknown to him, I would tend to his grave when I was fifteen.  (Copyright 2003, Mickey Cooper)

Name Birth Death Comments
Bailey, Alba - - -
Bailey, Annie - - inf. d/o Henry & Kizzie Elizabeth Harris Bailey Norris
C.C. - - -
Coats, A.D. 11/04/1876 07/14/1878 -
Coats, Anna 17/26/1826 12/14/1862 -
Coats, Billie Frank 01/02/1938 01/02/1938 -
Coats, Charlie 01/08/1860 04/25/1884 -
Coats, Cynthia L. 10/05/1850 04/30/1865 -
Coats, Henry 07/19/1868 - -
Coats, J.D. 12/14/1862 11/11/1917 -
Coats, Jessse 12/20/1873 01/05/1874 -
Coats, Jeff - 1917 baby    reported in the Nov 16, 1917 issue  of the Rains County Leader (died last  week)
Coats, Jim 10/18/1853 12/24/1920 -
Coats, John 12/17/1866 04/13/1867 -
Coats, Johnnie           1916          1936 -
Coats, Jullie           1840          1890 -
Coats, Mac - - -
Coats, Robert - 04/27/1884 -
Coats, Sallie M. 12/29/1873 11/15/1888 -
Coats, William F. 07/03/1855 05/06/1865 -
Donaldson, America M.            1849           1927 wife of TW
Donaldson, Jim Levi           1891           1907 s/oTW & A.
Donaldson, T.W.           1849           1919 s/o JW & Elizabeth Webster Gibson
Donaldson, Viola 09/09/1880 10/11/1883 d/o TW & A
Donaldson, Willie           1887           1888 child of TW & A
Fisher, Infant daughter Mar ?? 1910 May 15 1910 d/o Wilmer & ?ona Fisher
Harris, Wallace           1923           1932 -
Keenum, Elias E.           1841           1879 -
Keenum, Lyrce -         c1879 -
Keenum, Polly -         c1880 -
Keenum, Sufronia -         c1878 -
Kerr, Analene 06/22/1910 06/16/1911 -
Kerr, George Ransom 11/21/1872 10/21/1961 s/o Jeff T. & Mary Jane
Kerr, Jeff 02/17/1892 --/24/1909 -
Kerr, Jeff T.           1838          1874 husb/of Mary Jane
Kerr, Jessie M. 09/15/1880 10/13/1928 Tadlock, wife/of George Ransom;
mother of Henry Eli
Kerr, Mary Jane Rains           1841          1897 niece of Emory Rains
Kerr, Robert 08/18/1871 04/12/1891 -
Kerr, Robert A. 11/07/1903 02/26/1904 -
Kerr, T.J. - 05/17/1874 -
Kidd, Burt - - baby
Norris, Jeff - - -
Norris, T.J. - 09/24/1905 husb/of Kizzie Elizabeth Harris Bailey
Partridge, Annie - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, baby - - -
Partridge, Charley - - -
Partridge, Emma - - -
Partridge, J.W. 03/09/1876 04/01/1911 -
Partridge, Joe Thomas O 04/18/1921     26 yrs Joe  Obit Apr 22 1921
Partridge, Sallie           1855           1920 -
Pelky, baby - - -
Pelky, Ester - - -
Rains, Johnnie 10/18/1845 10/28/1917 -
Rains, Mamie J. - - -
Rains, P. P. 09/08/1836 10/25/1908 Obit
Tadlock, baby - - -
Taylor, Maud 04/01/1895 05/11/1923 -
Trimble, Annie B. 12/26/1885 11/12/1886 -
Trimble, Emma Kate 12/19/1890 05/23/1895 -
Trimble, Sarah S. 05/06/1859 10/10/1865 -
Waskon, Samuel B. 01/09/1861 07/31/1881 -