Bear Creek Cemetery
Euless, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery was developed adjacent to the site of the Bear Creek Missionary Baptist Church, which was organized in 1853. The earliest marked grave is that of Hiram Jackson Farris (d. 1858), the infant son of G.W. and Mary Farris. Isham Crowley (1798-1878), who came to Texas as a member of Peters Colony, donated the burial ground and deeded it to church trustees in 1876. The congregation later moved to Dallas County and was renamed Western Heights Missionary Baptist Church. Still in use, Bear Creek Cemetery is the burial site of many eastern Tarrant County pioneers. (1980)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground grew up beside the Bear Creek Missionary Baptist Church, organized in 1853, with its earliest marked grave that of infant Hiram Jackson Farris in 1858. Isham Crowley, who came to Texas with the Peters Colony, donated the land and deeded it to the church trustees in 1876. Though the congregation later moved to Dallas County, the cemetery remains in use as the resting place of many eastern Tarrant County pioneers.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of the Peters Colony settlers who opened North Texas to Anglo-American settlement before the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s, North Texas was a frontier that the young Republic of Texas badly wanted settled. To attract settlers, the Republic signed empresario contracts with land companies. The best known in this region was the Peters Colony. It offered free land to families and single men willing to come, build homes and farm the prairie.
The settlers came, mostly from the upper South and the Midwest. They arrived in wagons and built cabins along creeks like the one that gave Bear Creek its name. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and within a few years new counties, including Tarrant, were being organized to govern the growing population.
In communities like this, the church was often the first real institution. It served as a meeting house, a school and a center of social life. A cemetery usually grew up next to it, and it often became the most lasting record of who those first families were.
People & events
The Bear Creek Missionary Baptist Church was organized in 1853, when this part of Tarrant County was still thinly settled farmland. The cemetery grew up next to the church. Its earliest marked grave tells a familiar, painful frontier story. It belongs to Hiram Jackson Farris, the infant son of G.W. and Mary Farris, who died in 1858.
Isham Crowley was born in 1798 and came to Texas as a member of the Peters Colony. In 1876 he donated the burial ground and deeded it to the church trustees, putting on paper what the community had long been doing in practice. He died two years later, in 1878.
The congregation itself eventually moved to Dallas County and took the name Western Heights Missionary Baptist Church. The cemetery stayed behind. It is still in use, and it holds many of the pioneers of eastern Tarrant County, along with the generations who came after them.
Its place in the American story
The Peters Colony was one of the main ways North Texas was settled, and its families laid the groundwork for what is now one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. Cemeteries like Bear Creek are among the few places where those first settlers can still be found by name.
The cemetery also reflects how rural churches anchored frontier communities across America. The church organized first, the burial ground followed, and a landowner formalized the gift with a deed to the trustees. That pattern repeated itself thousands of times as Americans moved west.
Today the setting has changed beyond recognition. The prairie farms are gone, and the area around Euless is part of the busy Dallas–Fort Worth region. A cemetery that is still in use keeps a direct connection between the frontier settlers and the people who live here now.
If you visit
Walk slowly and read the stones. Look for the oldest ones, which are often smaller and more weathered, and think about the 1858 infant grave that marks where this cemetery's recorded history begins. Family names that show up again and again tell the story of the pioneer families who stayed.
This is still an active cemetery, so be respectful. Keep to the paths, don't touch fragile old markers, and give space to anyone visiting a loved one.
Euless sits close to DFW International Airport, so this is an unusually easy historic stop if you are flying in or out of the Metroplex. A few quiet minutes here, with jets overhead, is a striking reminder of how quickly prairie farmland became one of the busiest places in America.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Hiram Jackson Farris
- · Isham Crowley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alexander Dobkins Family Cemetery
Euless, TX
Alexander and Mary Dobkins came from Tennessee in 1852 as part of the wave of pioneers settling North Texas, taking up a 200-acre farm on this ground. Alexander was ordained a Baptist minister and served as postmaster for Estill's Station during the Civil War, and his 1869 grave is the earliest here. His son William, buried beside him, became a physician and civic leader for the growing community.
First United Methodist Church of Euless
Euless, TX
In the late 1860s, Methodist families from Tennessee settled this corner of Tarrant County and began meeting for worship, sharing a Grange hall with neighbors of other faiths. As pioneer Elisha Adam Euless gave his name to the growing community, the congregation built its first sanctuary and welcomed circuit-riding preachers who covered a wide rural territory. The church grew alongside the town, and when Fort Worth and Dallas sprawl reached Euless in the mid-twentieth century, both congregation and community expanded together.
Minters Chapel Methodist Church
Grapevine, TX
About 1854 four pioneer families organized this Methodist congregation, meeting first in a log cabin on land James Cate donated for a church, school, and cemetery. They named the fellowship for the Rev. Green Washington Minter, whose leadership guided its founding and early growth, and through hardship the church became a focal point of the community. In 1967 it was moved to this spot when its original site fell within the boundaries of the new Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
Minter's Chapel Cemetery
Grapevine, TX
Not long after lay minister Green W. Minter settled here around 1854, he helped organize Minter's Chapel Methodist Church, and his son-in-law James Cate set aside 4.1 acres for a church and burial ground. The earliest marked grave dates to 1857, and the many small headstones speak to how often frontier families buried their children. A log meetinghouse gave way to a frame church in 1882, and in 1967 the growing Dallas-Fort Worth airport absorbed all but this small cemetery.