Pioneer Cemeteries

Early Cemetery History

Frances James recently spent many hours researching and writing for Volume II of Dallas County History From The Ground Up. She frequently is invited to speak and bring DCPA publications to meetings throughout the area. Her latest report involves the following cemeteries:

Cemetery in the Alley : A great deal of time has been spent trying to sort out the “cemetery in the alley” in Garland. The Russell Fletcher family came to Texas in 1854 from Shelbyville, Illinois. They had eleven children but one married daughter stayed with her husband on their farm in Illinois. Some of the others were adults and their descendants are scattered around the USA. Russell died after being in Texas only two years and is buried, I believe, on the land they owned in the W.H. Keen Survey. Thus this “cemetery in the alley” should be called the Fletcher Cemetery - a marker with the names of all known persons buried in this cemetery will be placed on the site this fall.

This “cemetery in the alley” has also been called the Axe Cemetery. Twenty years after the Fletcher family came to Texas the Carl Axe family came to Dallas County from New Orleans. This too, was a large family, but the first year they were in Dallas, Carl was involved in the organization of the Zion Lutheran Church in downtown Dallas. During this time one of their little girls died. For many years the inventories of the Pioneer Cemetery downtown would show Josephine Axe, died 1874. The inventory would explain that her headstone was written in German and was deteriorating - family unknown. Now we know the history of the unknown child, and have shared this with descendants of the family who still live in Garland and did not even know of her burial place. Gene Gaddy, one of DCPA best researchers, has backed all this information with his careful searches of the census records and the internet!

The “cemetery in the alley’ has also been the Loudermilk Cemetery, this, too, is wrong as there are no known Loudermilks buried here - the Fletcher family members are buried here. The Axes may have owned the surrounding land after the Fletcher’s sold, but there does not seem to be any of the Axe family buried here. The location of the Axe family graves are in the Masonic and the Mills Cemeteries in Garland for the most part. No one seems to know why it was ever called the Loudermilk?

The Three Forks of the Trinity lured another large family in 1844. Enoch Horton and his wife Martha Stinson Horton managed to get here with three sons old enough to get Peter Colony grants, too. This family through marriages also added to the population of Dallas County. In the book about Old Cemeteries compiled in 1949 by Willie Flowers Carlisle and her daughter the Horton Cemetery was listed with some of the names. The inventory said the first person buried there was John Horton, the brother of James Horton who donated land for the cemetery. He was also Sarah Horton Cockrell’s brother.

Sounds good, but not true! John did not die until 1870 and raised his family (he had two wives) in Dallas. The person whose headstone was used to make this claim was John Hopkins (1899-1848) the father of Elizabeth Margaret Hopkins the first wife of John Horton. These old headstones were practically illegible and covered with grass and vines when the inventory was made. We should all be grateful to Willie Flowers Carlisle who back in the 1930s and 1940s fought the- powers- that- be to protect these sites. I can see her now standing on the running board of some sort of automobile looking into the cemetery diligently trying to record all this information. The information was typed on onion skin paper and bound located on the 7th Floor of the Main Library. Only one copy was available. Years ago Faye Evans, a member of the Dallas County Pioneer Association, was allowed by the 7th Floor Dallas/Texas History section to volunteer her time to copy these pages that were falling apart by the 1980s. The Library then paid to have the information bound in a hard cover. We should be grateful for Faye, too.

The finances at the library are usually the first item the City cuts when money for the Budget gets tight. There were five large Miller scrap books that were available to look through as the clippings and other papers covered all sort of events around the County for many years. After a while these old books became unavailable as they too were falling apart.

Now a lot of information can be derived from the internet, but it is not the same. Jim Wheat’s Web Page can be used by all with no charge. Other associations have information, but you have to belong to their “dot.com” at an annual fee, or some other cost.

The Dallas County Pioneer Association web page is available and easy to access. New items appear all the time and our own Jim Foster, now County Judge is web master! Send him a story if you want to get in on the Internet!

The Western Heights Cemetery is on Ft. Worth Avenue in Oak Cliff. An association of business owners has been organized and the City of Dallas is working with the Ft Worth Avenue Development Group. This group has a beatification committee to work with other property owners to improve this main thoroughfare. They are also considering helping with the maintenance of the Western Heights Cemetery as one of their projects. Let’s all hope this happens because the list of descendants who send a donation each year is getting shorter and shorter. It was necessary to spend money again this year as the old trees are dying and need to be removed. One other “keep your fingers crossed” event may happen at the Western Heights – a new fence in being donated and installed today. The fence that has served all these years was provided for by volunteers in the 1980s. The vandals who bring beer bottles to place on Clyde Barrow’s grave tear down the fence at will. Through all this activity there are still several members of the Struck Family who maintain their section of this cemetery. This family emigrated from Mecklenberg, Germany and Mrs. Struck was such a good cook she was hired by the Sanger family to cook for them!