Bowman Cemetery

Allen, TX

On November 15, 1847, thirteen pioneers gathered in Joseph Russell's log cabin near present-day Allen to organize one of Collin County's earliest Methodist congregations, served at first by circuit-riding preachers on the far-flung Dallas circuit. As the railroad reshaped the area in the 1870s, the church followed its people, worshiping in schoolhouses and, thanks to neighborly Baptists, in borrowed pews before building its own house in 1902. Through fires, rebuildings, and a final 1966 sanctuary, the congregation endured—counting among its members Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, a surgeon who treated President Kennedy in 1963.

Murphy, TX

This medallion marks McMillen Cemetery, established in 1901 and later designated a Historic Texas Cemetery. Burial grounds like it anchored the small farming communities that dotted Collin County's Blackland Prairie in the early twentieth century, often outlasting the settlements they once served.

Murphy, TX

Settled in the early 1840s by pioneers from a dozen states drawn to the fertile Blackland Prairie, this community farmed and ranched the tall-grass, black-soil country for well over a century. It took the name Murphy in 1888 when William Murphy granted right-of-way to the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, though the city itself wasn't formally established until 1958. Founding Maxwell, McMillen, and Murphy families built the stores and schools of an agrarian town that faded by 1970—only to revive in the 1980s as a Dallas suburb.

Murphy, TX

In 1872, on the death of his sister Susan Emberton, William A. Murphy set aside a corner of his North Texas land as a private family burial ground, laying it out with sons' families to the north and daughters' to the south. As the Murphys drifted west in the late 1800s, the plot opened to the wider Murphy community, taking its last burial in 1988. Today it rests among cedars first planted by William and Dorothy Murphy's daughters.