Bethel Cemetery
Coppell, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
James Parrish came to Texas from Ohio prior to 1844 as a member of the Peters Colony. He and his wife Eliza Jane (Record) moved to Dallas County about 1848. They established a home in this area on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River which became known as the Parrish neighborhood. Sometime before James Parrish's death in October 1853, he and his wife set aside land on their farm for a community cemetery. Joshua Hill was buried here in 1859, the apparent victim of smallpox. More interments occurred in the following decades, including those of James Pinson Howell (1865), John L. Howell (1866), and Malinda Pemberton Howell (ca. 1871). Also believed to be buried here are five men and a boy who were victims of a lynching in 1869; several Confederate vererans of the Civil War; and two former slaves. Although descendants estimate there were at least two hundred graves here, all but two have been lost to vandalism and development of the surrounding area. The two remaining tombstones mark the graves of one-day-old Oda Kirby (1909) and three-year-old Ervin Wickersham (1910 - 1913). The Historic Bethel Cemetery Association, formed in 1987, cares for the graveyard.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Set aside before 1853 by Peters Colony pioneer James Parrish on his farm along the Elm Fork of the Trinity, this cemetery holds the layered history of a vanished community—smallpox victims, Confederate veterans, former slaves, and six people killed in an 1869 lynching. Of an estimated two hundred graves, all but two have been lost to vandalism and development, leaving the resting places of two small children as almost the only visible markers.
Why it matters
The graveyard is a fragile archive of frontier settlement, Civil War-era violence, and the lives of the enslaved and freed, much of it now erased by time and neglect.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s, North Texas was frontier country. The Republic of Texas, eager for settlers, contracted with an empresario company that became known as the Peters Colony, and it brought families into the region that now includes Dallas County. Newcomers from the Midwest and the Upper South arrived to farm the rich land along rivers like the Elm Fork of the Trinity.
The decades after that brought hard change. Epidemic diseases such as smallpox could sweep through a rural community, and a small family graveyard often became the burial ground for a whole neighborhood. Then came the Civil War, which sent local men into Confederate service and ended with the emancipation of enslaved Texans.
The years right after the war, during Reconstruction, were violent across much of Texas. Law enforcement was weak, tensions ran high, and lynching was a terrible part of that era's reality. Those events touched even quiet farm communities like this one.
People & events
James Parrish came to Texas from Ohio before 1844 as a member of the Peters Colony. He and his wife, Eliza Jane, moved to Dallas County about 1848 and made their home along the Elm Fork. Their farm grew into what locals called the Parrish neighborhood. Before James died in October 1853, the couple set aside part of their land as a community cemetery, a gift to neighbors who would need a place to bury their dead.
The graves that followed tell the community's story. Joshua Hill was buried here in 1859, apparently a victim of smallpox. Members of the Howell family followed in the 1860s and around 1871. Confederate veterans are believed to lie here, and so are two people who had once been enslaved. Five men and a boy killed in a lynching in 1869 are believed to be buried here as well, a dark event the record preserves without full detail.
Descendants estimate the cemetery held at least two hundred graves. Today, after vandalism and development, only two tombstones remain, and both belong to children: Oda Kirby, who lived a single day in 1909, and Ervin Wickersham, who died in 1913 at age three. Since 1987, the Historic Bethel Cemetery Association has cared for the grounds.
Its place in the American story
Bethel Cemetery holds, in one small plot, much of the 19th-century American experience: frontier settlement, deadly disease, the Civil War, slavery and freedom, and the violence of Reconstruction. People with very different stories are buried side by side here.
It also shows how easily history disappears. Across the country, family and community graveyards like this one have been lost to growth, neglect, and vandalism. When the stones go, the names often go with them, and the stories of the poor, the enslaved, and the victims of violence tend to vanish first.
That is why the work of groups like the Historic Bethel Cemetery Association matters. Their care is part of a national effort to protect burial grounds as historical records and to make sure that people who were left out of official histories are not forgotten a second time.
If you visit
Come quietly. What you'll see is mostly open ground and two small stones for two small children, but the marker asks you to picture the roughly two hundred graves that once stood here. That absence is the most powerful thing about the place.
Take a moment to think about the range of people resting here: pioneers, a smallpox victim, soldiers, formerly enslaved people, and the victims of a lynching. It is a place for reflection rather than sightseeing, and a good one for a thoughtful conversation with older children about how history can be lost.
The cemetery sits among modern development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which makes it a striking contrast to the suburbs around it. Be respectful of the grounds, and consider pairing your visit with other sites that tell the story of North Texas' Peters Colony settlers and the Trinity River frontier.
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
- · James Parrish
- · Eliza Jane Parrish
Themes & tags
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