Thursday, May 2, 2024
Located on the outskirts of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice property in Gatesville lies a small cemetery surrounded by a stone wall with the remains of 16 young boys ranging in age from 10 to 20 years old. The cemetery dates back to when the prison was a facility known as the Gatesville State School for Boys.
The cemetery stands as a reminder of the early days of the juvenile corrections system, which operated on the outskirts of Gatesville for 81 years.
The Gatesville State School for Boys was a juvenile corrections facility operated by the Texas Prison System. It opened in 1889 with 68 boys who had previously been in correctional facilities with adult felons. In the beginning, the Gatesville facility not only housed young inmates, but boys who didn’t have family members or any other place to live. The boys were put into two different categories – those who had committed a crime and were considered “inmates” while those who were without family or a place to live were referred to as “students.”
The cemetery at the facility was created about 1908, and the first person buried there was named James Sprague. Over the years, the cemetery population would gradually grow. Some of the boys died from illnesses, others at the hands of gangs within the facility, and a few reported from abuse by the guards. One young man, 20-year-old William Gent, drowned while trying to swim across the Leon River, presumably trying to escape. His remains were also interred at the school’s cemetery.
During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, at least five young men succumbed to the virus and were laid to rest at the cemetery — one of which was the youngest boy buried there, 10-year-old James Franklin Morrell. His death certificate recorded that he had died of the Spanish flu in October of 1918. The certificate showed that his father was deceased, and little information was known about his mother.
Morrell became an “inmate” at the Gatesville facility in March of 1917 when he was nine years old. He was the son of Percy and Mary Effie Morrell, who were living in Houston in 1910 when young James was two years old. It is unknown what James had done in order to be sentenced to the Gatesville facility at the age of nine. Following his father’s death, his mother went on to remarry and lived until 1957.
The last burial in the cemetery at the State School for Boys was of 18-year-old Dave Blackburn, who died in August of 1920.
It was reported in 1970 that U.S. District named Judge William Wayne Justice ordered the facility closed due to cruel and inhumane punishments.
The cemetery is not accessible to the public, but can be viewed on Findagrave.com
