Bradley Cemetery
McKinney, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Edward Bradley, his wife Nancy, and their family came to this area from Kentucky in the 1840s as members of the Peters Colony. They built a log home on a branch of Wilson's Creek in the southwest part of present McKinney. A hillside near the Bradley home became the site of a family graveyard. The original cemetery covered about an acre of land. Though begun as a family cemetery, other members of the small community were eventually interred here. Eleven original headstones remain in the cemetery. There are believed to be a number of unmarked graves, as well. South of this plot a slave cemetery was located in a wooded area, the graves marked with bois d'arc wood markers. The oldest documented grave is that of Edward Bradley (1787-1855). Nancy Bradley (d.1880), and their son and daughter-in-law, Thomas T. (d.1881) and Sarah J. (d.1876) Bradley, are also buried here. Others interred in the cemetery include Dr. David Maclay (d.1859), six-month-old William B. Pulliam (d.1863), and Susan R. Parrish and her child, who died within months of each other in 1861. The historic Bradley Cemetery serves as a reminder to Collin County residents of their area's heritage. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Edward Bradley brought his family from Kentucky in the 1840s as members of the Peters Colony, building a log home on a branch of Wilson's Creek in what is now McKinney. A nearby hillside became the family graveyard and then a community cemetery, holding eleven marked headstones and many unmarked graves — including, in a wooded plot to the south, an enslaved people's cemetery marked with bois d'arc wood. The oldest documented burial is Edward Bradley himself, who died in 1855.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves both a pioneer family's story and the segregated resting place of the people they enslaved, a stark record of frontier settlement built on slavery.
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Related people
- · Edward Bradley
- · Nancy Bradley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George McGarrah Cemetery
McKinney, TX
George McGarrah brought his family to this corner of North Texas in the 1840s as a member of the Peters Colony, having already left his mark as a builder in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On his own land he set aside a small family burying ground, becoming its first occupant in 1879. Its ten graves hold three generations of his family—and, in an unmarked plot, a person he had enslaved.
Scott Cemetery
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Scott Cemetery began in the 1850s on the land of pioneer James Preston Scott, whose two-year-old granddaughter, Mary C. Taylor, was the first person buried here. Among its more than 200 graves — at least 30 of them unmarked — are two enslaved people, Jake and Rhoda, laid to rest in the northwest corner. Scott himself, who died while serving in the Texas Legislature, was buried here in 1858, and the ground still serves the surrounding rural communities.
Plano Cemetery
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This graveyard lies on a Peters Colony land grant held by Joseph Klepper, an Illinois immigrant who reached Collin County around 1845. It holds the graves of five Peters colonists and their families alongside other early settlers, and over time became the community's only burial ground for its Black residents. The cemetery has long been tied to the First Methodist Church, which once stood on adjacent land Klepper deeded.
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