Antioch Life Park Cemetery
Grand Prairie, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early African American pioneer Mose Jordan Sr. came to the Grand Prairie area as an enslaved person of David Jordan in 1852. As early as the late 1850s, this part of David Jordan's land was used as a cemetery for enslaved people of the Jordan Plantation. After the Civil War, the Jordans freed their remaining nine slaves in 1865 and divided fifty acres of land among them. Mose Sr., along with two other families, established Freetown also known as "The Line," a community of African Americans just east of Grand Prairie under what is now Mountain Creek Lake. When Mountain Creek Lake was impounded in the 1920s, the Freetown community resettled to Dalworth. Antioch (Antioc) Cemetery was officially established in 1881 when 200 acres were sold to Charles O'Donnell with a provision that one acre be reserved for fencing in a graveyard and building a Catholic chapel. The cemetery was shown to be adjacent to the Jordan property slave cemetery. The Antioch Baptist Church was built on the property in 1891 and over time the two cemeteries became one, later known as Antioch St. John's Cemetery. An important early gathering place for the Freetown community, the Live Stone Masonic Lodge, was nearby. There are various historic-age monuments throughout the 'Antioc' and 'Old Cemetery' sections. Many in the 'Old Cemetery' commemorate members of the Jordan family. One known burial is Mose Jordan (Jorden), Jr. These sections are surrounded by the new sections of what came to be known as American Memorial Park Cemetery. There are 89 known veterans buried in the cemetery who are recognized with ceremonies on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Renamed in 2016 to honor its historical roots, Antioch Life Park Cemetery is the final resting place for many named and unnamed earliest members of the Freetown and Dalworth communities. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2018
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mose Jordan Sr. arrived in the Grand Prairie area as an enslaved man in 1852, and by the late 1850s part of the Jordan plantation was already a burial ground for the enslaved. After the Civil War the Jordans freed their remaining slaves and divided fifty acres among them, and Mose helped found Freetown—also called 'The Line'—a Black community later displaced by Mountain Creek Lake. The plantation and Antioch cemeteries merged over time into this resting place for the earliest members of the Freetown and Dalworth communities.
Why it matters
This ground holds the physical memory of slavery, emancipation, and the self-made freedmen's communities of North Texas, honoring names and lives that official histories often erased.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The story of this ground begins before the Civil War, on the Blackland Prairie of North Texas, in the world of slavery. In 1852 an enslaved man named Mose Jordan Sr. was brought to the Grand Prairie area, held as property on the land of David Jordan. Within a few years, part of that land had already become a burial place — a cemetery for the enslaved people of the Jordan plantation.
That detail alone tells you how early and how deep the Black presence in this place runs. Before emancipation, before there was any free community here, there was already sacred ground where the enslaved laid their dead to rest.
When freedom came in 1865 — the year of emancipation that Texas remembers as Juneteenth — everything changed. The nine people still enslaved on the Jordan land were freed, and fifty acres were divided among them. For people who had owned nothing, not even themselves, land of their own was the foundation of a new life.
People & events
With that land, Mose Jordan Sr. and two other families built something entirely new: a community called Freetown, also known as 'The Line,' just east of Grand Prairie. It was one of the freedmen's settlements that sprang up across the South after the war, a place where formerly enslaved families could farm, worship, and govern their own affairs.
The cemetery grew alongside the community's institutions. In 1881 the surrounding land was sold to Charles O'Donnell with a provision reserving an acre for a fenced graveyard and a Catholic chapel, and in 1891 the Antioch Baptist Church was built on the property. Over time the older plantation burial ground and this newer cemetery grew together into one. Nearby stood the Live Stone Masonic Lodge, an important gathering place for Freetown's people. Among the known burials in the older section is Mose Jordan Jr. — the marker preserves the family's own spelling, 'Jorden.'
Then came displacement. When Mountain Creek Lake was impounded in the 1920s, the waters covered the site of Freetown, and the community resettled in Dalworth. The living moved on, but the dead — and this cemetery — remained as the anchor of the community's memory, later known as Antioch St. John's and eventually folded within the newer American Memorial Park Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
This single burial ground holds the entire arc of the African American experience in miniature: slavery, emancipation, the building of free communities, and the displacement that so often followed. Few places compress that much national history into one plot of Texas earth.
The founding of Freetown is the heart of it. All across the postwar South, freedpeople who received or bought land created settlements of their own — self-governing, self-sustaining communities that were among the most hopeful achievements of emancipation. That so many were later erased, in this case literally submerged beneath a reservoir, is part of the American story too, a pattern of Black communities uprooted by the priorities of a growing modern nation.
What endures is memory made physical. The cemetery holds the earliest members of the Freetown and Dalworth communities, named and unnamed alike, and among them 89 known veterans — men who served a country that had not always served them. That the site was renamed in 2016 to honor its roots, and designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2018, reflects a wider national reckoning with histories that official records too often left out.
If you visit
Come to Antioch Life Park Cemetery as you would to any active, sacred place — quietly, and with respect. This is a working cemetery, still in use, and the historic sections are woven within the newer grounds, so take your time to find them.
Seek out the older areas the marker describes — the 'Antioc' and 'Old Cemetery' sections — where historic-age monuments still stand, many of them marking members of the Jordan family. Walking among them, you are moving through the layers of the story: the plantation burial ground, the freedmen's community, and the generations since.
If you can, visit around Memorial Day or Veterans Day, when the cemetery honors its 89 known veterans with ceremonies — a living continuation of the remembrance this ground has always been about. Nestled in the Grand Prairie area between Dallas and Fort Worth, it is an easy and deeply worthwhile detour for anyone drawn to the fuller, truer history of North Texas. Read the marker slowly; it carries names and lives that were very nearly lost, and remembering them is the whole point of standing here.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Mose Jordan Sr.
- · Mose Jordan Jr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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