Bethany Rest Cemetery
Alvarado, Johnson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bethany Rest Cemetery A small group of settlers from Alabama arrived in the Alvarado area, near Chambers Creek, in 1857. Among them were the Frost, Newby, Murphree and Head families. The family of Sampson and Betty Ann Blakely head settled about a mile north of this site in a community that came to be called Fairview. Their son A.A. "Ben" Head and his wife, Sarah Alabama Bethany Newby Head, donated two acres to Bethany Church, originally known as Head's Chapel, in 1903. In 1908, the trustees set it aside as a burial ground. Many of the earliest area settlers were buried in the nearby Buel and Jones cemeteries. At the church's burial ground, known as Bethany Rest Cemetery, the first marked grave, that of fifteen-year-old Marcy Thompson, dates to 1908. Earlier unmarked graves may exist. A cemetery association formed in 1917 and added a fence to protect the graves. The church congregation disbanded in 1960 and donated an additional acre to the cemetery, which today features curbed plots, metal fencing, vertical stones and gated entry. It serves as an important historical reminder of the surrounding rural community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1857 a small group of Alabama families settled near Chambers Creek, founding a rural community called Fairview north of this site. Decades later, in 1903, the Head family donated land for a church—first called Head's Chapel—and in 1908 its trustees set part of it aside as a burial ground. The earliest marked grave, that of fifteen-year-old Marcy Thompson, dates to that year, and a cemetery association later fenced and cared for the plots that still serve the surrounding countryside.
Why it matters
Country cemeteries like Bethany Rest map the quiet history of the rural churches and pioneer families that settled the Texas prairie.
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Related people
- · A.A. "Ben" Head
- · Sarah Alabama Bethany Newby Head
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
A. A. and Susanna Head Homestead
Alvarado, TX
Around 1877 Alanson Asbury Head and his wife Susanna—known affectionately as Uncle Ben and Aunt Sukie—built a two-story home here and terraced some 300 acres into orchards, vineyards, and berry patches. As their farm prospered they gave two acres in 1903 for the Head Chapel Methodist Church and two more in 1908 for the Bethany Rest Cemetery, where they were later buried side by side.
Site of Norman Springs & Norman Grove
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For decades these springs on the road from Fort Worth to Waco drew both people and history to a single patch of Johnson County prairie. Caddo families were camped here when the Balch family arrived to claim Peters Colony land around 1851, and the two lived as peaceable neighbors before settlers' growing numbers pushed the Caddo toward Oklahoma by 1860. Later owner Lafayette Norman kept the spring open to weary travelers, giving it the name Norman Springs, until the great droughts of the 20th century dried it to a muddy trace marked only by a willow.
Johnson County Pioneers and Old Settlers Reunion
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In 1893, at the prompting of farmer and newspaper correspondent John James, Johnson County residents gathered for a picnic that grew into one of Texas's largest old-settler reunions. The first official reunion drew more than two thousand people to Gathings Park, and after moving among several towns the organization bought this ground for a permanent campground in 1906. Through pavilions lost to tornado and fire and rebuilt again, the reunion swelled into a beloved institution of parades, contests, and concerts drawing ten thousand and more.
Alvarado Glenwood Cemetery
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In the 1870s, two pioneer families — the Campbells and the Sansoms — buried their dead on a rise of North Texas prairie, the earliest a seven-month-old child laid to rest in 1876. When the railroad reached Alvarado in 1881, newcomers poured in and buried their own kin beside those first family plots, and by 1896 the Knights of Pythias and Odd Fellows had added lodge burial grounds. During the Great Depression the city took over care of the combined grounds, known ever since as Glenwood Cemetery.