Tarrant County TXGenWeb

Morgan Hood Survey
Pioneer Cemetery

 Contributed by Michael E. Patterson
 Member, Tarrant County Historical Commission
 
For more than a century, a small group of Grapevine's pioneers have been resting in a nearly-forgotten cemetery on State Highway 26 (formerly SH 121) near Grapevine Dam. Their names are now forgotten, most of their tombstones have been destroyed or have disappeared, and some of their graves have, at least once, been disturbed. This enigmatic burial ground lies in the Morgan Hood Survey (Tarrant County Abstract #699) beside a grove of giant post oaks, southeast of the highway about one quarter-mile southwest of its intersection with Bethel Road. The names of the pioneers buried there have been lost for generations.1

Time itself and the last fifty years of development of the land surrounding it have worked in concert to erase nearly all traces of the cemetery. For many years, farm animals seeking shade in the grove over turned and trampled the markers.2 More damage was done during the early 1930's when present State Highway 26 was built beside the cemetery,3 and most of the remaining traces were lost in the early 1970's when a pipeline was laid near the graves.4

The only written reference to the burial ground appears on a 1930 State Highway Department plan map made before grading operations began for the highway's construction. It is shown fenced on the east, south, and west sides and is labeled simply "Abandoned Cemetery."5 At no time since the 1854 patenting of the land has reference been made to the plot in any deed record.6

Most details of the cemetery's history have now been forgotten or replaced by local legend. The few people now living who remember it from their childhood say they saw less than ten marked graves.7 At least one burial was marked with a cairn of sandstone slabs set on edge and topped by one large horizontal slab; the others were marked only with fieldstones.8 Mrs. C. L. Plumlee, who was born and reared nearby, took some photographs of the cemetery while several of the markers were still visible, but the pictures were lost when her house burned in 1972.9 An examination of the site by members of the Tarrant County Historical Commission in early 1982 revealed remnants of only one adult-sized cairn (the outlining vertical stones and a large slab at the head). Other fieldstone markers may remain beneath the sod, but only one marked grave is now visible.

Several legends about the plot were current in the community many years ago.. Some said the graves were those of Indians;10 others said they held the bodies of Spanish explorers;11 one story even told they were those of Frenchmen who lived in a colony a few miles to the northwest up Denton Creek.12 James S. Saunders (1873-1945), a native of the community who moved onto the property about 1889 with his father's family, said his father, John S. Saunders (1836-1906), had been unable to learn anything about them when he bought the property in 1887.13 Henderson Tennessee Hurst (1870-1944), who first came to Grapevine in 1898, told his daughter he had heard that members of the Proctor family were buried there,14 though this now seems improbable in the light of recent research.15

Generations of children in the community knew of the cemetery and played among the stones. Grapevine resident Edward Langley (born 1912), who was reared nearby, remembers a day in the early or mid-1930's when an artifact-hunting college professor opened one of the graves. The professor found a skeleton under a row of neatly-aligned brass uniform buttons, still in place after the coat which had held them had disappeared. Langley anxiously watched the work. The skull, he noticed, was partly crushed. Talking to old-timers nearby, Langley was later told that during the Civil War a slave woman who lived in the community was attacked by a soldier; she killed him with a blow to the head. This find by the professor seemed to complement the local legend.17 The professor refilled the grave, but gave the skull to the property owners, Henry E. Saunders (1868-1948) and his brother, James S. Saunders. After the last brother's death in 1948, his niece obtained it and kept it several years. She eventually reburied it beside her home atCoppell, Texas, a short distance northeast of the cemetery.18

It is difficult to speculate on who is burled in the cemetery, given the distance in time from the events and the absence of records or specific traditions concerning the plot. Moreover, it does not appear that any of the property owners ever used it as a family burial ground.20 The land on which the cemetery sits was patented on May 23,185421 by James Tracy Morehead (1809-1897), a native of Rockbridge County, Virginia who settled. in northeast Tarrant County near the end of 1852. He patented the land as the assignee of the heirs of Morgan Hood. During a portion of the time he lived on the property he served as Tarrant County's second County Judge. The growing settlement a short distance southwest of his home was named Grape Vine at his suggestion about the same time he patented the land.22

On July 23, 1858, Morehead sold the tract to Richard Montgomery Gano (1830-1913).23 After settling in the area in the mid-1850's, Gano became a prominent Indian fighter, physician, Christian preacher, banker and rancher. He raised a company of Confederate volunteers in Grapevine at the beginning of the Civil War, and rose to the rank of Brigadier General before the War ended. Soon after the Civil War he left the area and returned to his native Kentucky for a time; about 1870 he returned to Dallas County where he was a community leader until his death.24

On July 4,1876,25 Gano sold the property to Margaret R. Keene (1839-1915) and W. H. Keene (1823-1890).26 The Keenes held the tract until April 30,1887,27 when they sold it to John Sherman Saunders (1836-1906). Mr. Saunders, a native of Claiborne County, Tennessee and ex-Lieutenant in the Confederate army, first brought his family to Grapevine Prairie on December 13, 1868. He moved into the town of Grapevine for a time, and did not take up residence on the Hood survey property until about 1889.28 The tract on which the cemetery sits remained in the hands of Saunders or his heirs until 1945.29 After several other transfers, it was acquired by the City of Dallas as part of the Dallas Regional Airport property on July 26, 1972.30 It remains on restricted airport property only a few feet from Highway 26, readily visible from the highway.

In the absence of specific facts, a few speculations may be made concerning the time the plot was used. The earliest Anglo-American settlers entered the immediate neighborhood in 1844 as members of the Peters Colony, an empresario grant.31 The graves of most settlers from the first decade of settlement are still unlocated, and this cemetery may contain some of them. The sandstone burial cairn(s) remembered by informants, and the absence of marble gravemarkers in the plot, would suggest that burials probably stopped there before 1880. Sandstone markers were predominant in northeast Tarrant County during the 1850's-1870's. There are several examples of burial cairns in nearby cemeteries, but few now have readable inscriptions. Most of the datable cairns were built during the 1870's; no nearby examples have been found with dates before 1856 nor after 1883. The one marker remaining at the site (used at the head of the remaining cairn) is a dressed sandstone slab standing on edge, measuring about thirty-six inches wide and four inches thick. A small number of similar homemade markers stand in other cemeteries nearby, but only three, dated 1859, 1863, and 1872, have readable inscriptions. The lack of any specific oral traditions about the plot among the early area families, and the evidence supplied by the types of grave markers used there, seem to point to an abandonment date quite early in the Anglo-American occupation of the area, possibly even during the Peters Colony period.

As a vestige of Tarrant County's earliest days of settlement, this cemetery deserves to be recognized and preserved just as others about which we know more. Even though their names have been forgotten, these pioneers were representatives of a time and culture which made possible later advancements in North Texas. They lived and died in a time when the immediacies of life took precedence over leaving detailed records or erecting long-lasting memorials to themselves. The Tarrant County Historical Commission hopes that a Texas State Historical Marker at this site will call the attention of today's citizens to the lives and sacrifices of their predecessors, and will finally, after a century of neglect, recognize them as pioneers of the Grapevine of today.

June 8,1982

 

FOOTNOTES

 
1. The name "Morgan Hood Survey Pioneer Cemetery" has been arbitrarily chosen by Commission researchers. There are two surveys in northeast Tarrant County bearing Morgan Hood's name; the other lies about one and one-half miles south of Grapevine and was patented to Hood's heirs on May 23, 1854. This cemetery is not to be confused with the Hood Cemetery in present-day Southlake, established on the Thomas M. Hood survey by 1855.
2. Arval Tate (b. 1907), interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, August 18, 1981.
3. Edward Langley (b. 1912), interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, August 17,1981.
4. ibid.
5. Texas, State Highway Department, "Plan-Profile Sheet, Control 346-6. Tarrant County; SH 26 (formerly SH 121): From Grapevine to Dallas County line," 1930.
6. Tarrant County, Texas, Deed Records, Vol F, p. 339: Vol. L, p. 505; Vol. 48, p. 579; Vol. 898, p. 81; Vol. 1726, p. 341; Vol. 1918, p. 41; Vol. 2334, p. 477; Vol. 2450, p. 55; Vol. 2466, p. 152; Vol. 4182, p. 27; Vol. 4507, p. 852; Vol. 5154, p. 549; Vol. 5283, p. 791.
7. Langley interview; Albert Stowe (b. 1894), interview with Patterson at Bedford, Texas, November 6, 1981; Alice (Corbin) Brown (b. 1904), interview with Patterson at Justin, Texas, August 18, 1981; C. L. Plumlee (b. 1910), interview with Patterson at DeKalb,Texas, August 18, 1981; Iska (Saunders) Plumlee (b. 1914), interview with Patterson at DeKalb, Texas, August 18, 1981; Arval Tate interview; Sue (Hurst) Lipscomb (b. 1911), interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, March 21, 1982.
8. Langley interview.
9. Iska (Saunders) Plumlee interview.
10. Sue (Hurst) Lipscomb interview.
11. Iska (Saunders) Plumlee interview.
12. Alice (Corbin) Brown interview. This oral tradition probably refers to the Icarlan Colony, a group of French immigrants who settled near present-day Justin in Denton County in 1848. For several reasons, the colony failed and its members were dispersed in only two or three years.
13. Iska (Saunders) Plumlee interview.
14. Georgia (Hurst) Breeding (1905-1976), interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, January 18,1975.
15. According to Tarrant County deed records, no Proctor has ever owned the tract on which the cemetery sits. Several members of the family, including Rebecca Proctor (1817-1900), McCager Proctor (1842-1899), and a married couple, S. W. (1836-1893) and H. E. (1848-1886) Proctor are buried in Grapevine Cemetery. Two descendants of the Grapevine area family, Carl Proctor (b. 1891 near the cemetery), and Minnie Starr (Walker) Frank, were unaware of the Hood survey plot's existence when contacted by the Commission.
16. Sue (Hurst) Lipscomb interview.
17. Edward Langley interview. Mr. Langley was interviewed in Dallas Archeological Society, The Record, (March 1977), p. 7, with a variant account of the legend:
Between 1935 and 1937, a man from the University of Texas, Austin, whose name is not remembered, excavated one of the graves. He was apparently looking for Indian burials. In the grave, the remains were found resting on the side, as if the body had been roughly thrown in at burial. A button, said to be from a Confederate uniform, was recovered. As soon as the button was found, the excavation was discontinued... According to one hearsay account, the buried man, a stranger, had an affair or an altercation with a black woman. He was killed and his body buried in the family cemetery. [Account does not say whose family cemetery.]
18. Iska (Saunders) Plumlee interview.
19. Sue (Hurst) Lipscomb interview.
20. James Tracy Morehead and wife, Sally, (d. 1905), are buried in Grapevine Cemetery, which other members of the Morehead family were using as early as 1872. The only member of Gano's family who died during the time he owned the property was an infant daughter who died October 14, 1864. Gano, his wife, and other members of his family are buried in Dallas. W. H. and Margaret Keene were buried in Grapevine Cemetery in 1890 and 1915, respectively. The Saunders family experienced no deaths in the immediate family until 1886, when they too began using Grapevine Cemetery. According to Saunders descendants, all the burials in the pioneer cemetery were made before the elder Saunders bought the property in 1887.
21. Tarrant County Deeds, Vol. F, p. 339.
22. Grapevine Historical Society, Grapevine Area History, (Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 290-291, 491.
23. Tarrant County Deeds, Vol. F, p. 339.
24. Grapevine Area History, pp. 205-206.
25. Tarrant County Deeds, Vol. L, p. 505.
26. Grapevine Cemetery tombstones.
27. Tarrant County Deeds, Vol. 48, p. 579.
28. Grapevine Area History, pp. 84, 332-333.
29. Tarrant County Deeds, Vol. 1726, p. 341.
30. ibid, Vol. 5283, p. 791.
31. Bluford M. Gibson (b. 1838), recollections printed in Texas and Baptist Herald, Dec. 15, 1881.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Breeding, Georgia (Hurst) (1905-1976). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, January 18, 1975.

Brown, Alice (Corbin) (b. 1904). Interview with Patterson at Justin, Texas, August 18, 1981.

Crews, Corbin (b. 1900). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, August 18, 1981.

Frank, Minnie Starr (Walker). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, June 24,1976.

Gibson, Bluford M. (b. 1838). Recollections printed in Texas and Baptist Herald, December 15, 1881.

Grapevine Cemetery. Tombstone Inscriptions.

Grapevine Historical Society. Grapevine Area History. Dallas, Texas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1979.

Langley, Edward (b. 1912). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, August 17, 1981.

Lipscomb, Sue (Hurst) (b. 1911). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, March 21,1982.

Minters Chapel Cemetery. Tombstone Inscriptions.

Mt. Gilead Cemetery. Tombstone Inscriptions.

Patterson, Michael E. "Abandoned Pioneer Cemeteries of Northeast Tarrant County, Texas: A Preliminary Survey." Unpublished MS, 1976, at Tarrant County Junior College, Northeast Campus, Hurst, Texas.

Plumlee, C. L. (b. 1910). Interview with Patterson at DeKalb, Texas, August 18, 1981.

Plumlee, Iska (Saunders) (b. 1914). Interview with Patterson at DeKalb, Texas, August 18,1981.

Proctor, Carl (b. 1891). Interview with Patterson at Dallas, Texas, November 6, 1981.

Rain,. Mrs. Robert (great-granddaughter of R. M. Gano). Interview with Patterson at Dallas, Texas, March 15,1982.

Stowe, Albert (b. 1894). Interview with Patterson at Bedford, Texas, November 6,1981.

Tarrant County, Texas. Deed Records. Abstract Records.

Tate, Arval (b. 1907). Interview with Patterson at Grapevine, Texas, August 18, 1981.

Texas, State Department of Highways and Public Transportation. Fort Worth, Texas. Letter to Patterson, December 1, 1981. "Plan Profile Sheet, Control 346-6, Tarrant County, SH 26 (Formerly SH 121): From Grapevine to Dallas County line."

Dallas Archeological Society, The Record, Vol. 33, No.1, (March, 1977).


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