Dunnam-Harmon Cemetery

Houston Co. Cemeteries of TX

Submitted by Mel Harman

Recently, with the permission of the current owner, plus information/help from Letty Harrington & Roy Smith we were able to take a trip out to the Dunnam-Harmon cemetery.  It was a great trip and we had a good time.

Here is what we learned about the Dunnam-Family Cemetery. It is in bad shape (it was in bad shape back in early 90's when we went out there, but is much worse now).  Back when we went in the early 90's (I think it was probably the spring of 1990) the tombstones were in the center of a grove of trees.  There was a little underbrush around the trees, but once you got in the center, the shade from the trees was keeping grass, weeds, etc from growing.  However, the trees ended up with some type of disease or bug (maybe pine beetle...something like that)...the trees started falling over...looks like on many of the tombstones and now the wild growth is taking over what wasn't damaged by the trees falling/rotting/decaying.  We were only able to find three tombstones (there used to be a few more). Laura Harmon-Dunnam's funeral marker was there, but I wasn't able to get a photo clear enough to read it.  There was a base next to the marker.  It looked like her tombstone had sunk in the ground, but so deep we could not pry it out.  There was about 4 inches exposed.  Either that or it was the base and someone removed the headstone, as it was nowhere around.  I thought there used to be a tombstone for her husband there too, but we couldn't find one.

I promised the current owner that I would try to get the photos out there so people would have access to the cemetery on the net.

I have two pictures of what the actual cemetery looks now (John Wesley Harmon's tombstone is the broken one near the front and his wife Nancy's is the one further back).  The only other tombstone there that we could locate was that of a Thomas Calkin, 1883-1891,  I notice the 1880 census of Houston Co., TX has a Colkin family living near John and Nancy Harman, so he might be the son of "Richard Colkin".  I don't know of any relationship between the Harmons and the Calkins. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the photo did not take the full date of his birth & death until we got home.

Acknowledgements - We would like to thank Letty Harrington, Roy Smith, Jonathan Lawson and Calvin Bennett for helping make it possible to obtain these pictures.  Special thanks to John Head and Calvin Bennett for clearing the area of the tombstones enough that we could take pictures of what is left.