Funeral Business in Clarendon

Buntin followed the railroad to a town that had just picked itself up and moved. Clarendon's residents voted in 1887 to relocate to the Fort Worth and Denver City tracks, and the new town became a division point, with shops and offices built in 1887-88. An opera house made it a cultural center for the Panhandle. The first bank organized in 1889, a brick-and-stone courthouse was finished in 1890, and Homer Mulkey opened a photography studio in 1895. By about 1898 the town had 200 residences, forty-six businesses, six churches and forty-five windmills.

What the plaque says

Funeral Business in Clarendon For more than a century, this site has been the location of a funeral home, a vital community business serving a widespread area of the Panhandle. Kentucky native Pleasant Andrew Buntin (1849-1941) brought his family to Texas in 1879, settling first in Mobeetie (Wheeler Co.). The Buntins moved to Clarendon in 1888 following the arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. P.A. Buntin rode a mail route from there through Palo Duro Canyon and Schott Gap (Briscoe Co.) to the Caprock, changing wagons and horses to make the 60-mile round trip in a single day. Buntin also operated a dairy, and he was a charter member of the Methodist church and the Masonic lodge in Clarendon. At this site in 1899, Buntin established a funeral home, one of the earliest in the Texas Panhandle. He and his wife, Lucy Jane (Gibbs), had four children, and their youngest son Fred continued in the family business. Fred attended Clarendon College and the Dallas School of Embalming, and joined his father's company in 1919. The business territory covered several counties, and notable early burials conducted by the family included pioneer ranchers Charles and Mary Ann (Dyer) Goodnight in the 1920s. During World War II, the civic-minded Buntin Funeral Home provided military service plaques -- with blue stars for active personnel and gold stars for casualties -- for families to display in the windows of their homes. The Buntins sold the business in 1945, although the family name remained in use with others for several years. A number of families have since been associated with the historic operation, including, from 1977, the Robertsons, who for a short time owned another funeral parlor in Clarendon. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Donley County Courthouse — steps away
  Bulger and Rapp's red brick and white stone courthouse of 1891, the oldest in use in the Panhandle, given back its third floor and towers in a 2003 restoration.
• Saints' Roost Museum — 0.6 mi
  Clarendon's county museum in the hospital Cornelia Adair built for JA cowboys in 1910, named for the nickname cowhands gave a Methodist town with no saloons.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 26 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Clarendon — steps away
• Stockton P. Donley — 0.2 mi
• The Clarendon News — 0.3 mi
• St. Stephen's Baptist Church — 0.6 mi