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The Concho Cemetery was established at the community of Concho, Texas, in 1906. The land for the cemetery was donated to the community by J. W. Barr and his wife, Minnie Wilson, who came to Concho County in 1906 from Lohn, Texas. A historical marker devoted to the Community of Concho was erected by the Texas Historical Commission in 1983 and stands at the entrance to the cemetery. (Click here to view text on historical marker.)
The first grave in the cemetery was that of Sam Hughes who died in 1910. Hughes was a ranch hand for the J. W. Barr and Tillery families.
The Concho Cemetery remained a typical country cemetery throughout the years, maintained by the citizens of the community of Concho at a yearly “cemetery working.” Charlie and Frankie Cape began performing more regular maintenance on the cemetery in order to keep the grounds from becoming too overgrown.
In 1984, J. W. Barr’s granddaughter, Pauline Moseley Wells, and her husband, Edsel Wells, retired and built a home near the Concho Cemetery. The Wells adopted the cemetery as their retirement project and began fencing, mowing and regular maintenance of the grounds. They also created a plat map of the cemetery that identified all known existing and available gravesites. Concho County Commissioner Elmo Grounds aided the Wells by grading the existing east-west road into the cemetery and creating a north-south road.
After the adjacent Concho School burned in the mid-1980s, the Wells built a rock and iron entrance gate to the cemetery utilizing the old stones from the community school. The Wells’ two sons donated the trees and plants that surround the gate.
In 1999, Don and Sandra Goehring assumed the care of the cemetery. Don’s grandfather, John Lewis Goehring—who came to the Concho community in 1903 from DeWitt County, Texas—is buried in the Concho Cemetery along with other members of the Goehring family.
An annual meeting of the Concho Cemetery Association is held on the first Saturday in May, when families and friends of those buried in the cemetery gather to visit and remember.
(This historical information provided by Pauline Wells and Sandra Goehring, February 2001.)