HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Calloway Cemetery

Euless, Tarrant County, Texas

Marker Inscription

The earliest marked graves in this cemetery are those of two brothers, Richard H. Calloway (1832-1874) and Joseph W. Calloway (1829-1877), who owned this land in the 1860s. Richard's widow Catherine (Coble) deeded 1.5 acres here in 1886 for use as a public burial ground. The original site included the family cemetery and graves of several neighbors. The wooden Tabernacle was constructed in 1908. Families maintained the grounds until 1971 when a perpetual care fund was set up. Many pioneer settlers of eastern Tarrant County are buried here. (1980)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

The oldest graves here belong to the Calloway brothers, who owned this Tarrant County land in the 1860s; in 1886 Richard's widow Catherine deeded 1.5 acres for a public burial ground. A wooden tabernacle went up in 1908, and many of eastern Tarrant County's pioneer settlers rest in the grounds families tended until a perpetual-care fund took over in 1971.

Why it matters

The cemetery and its brush-arbor tabernacle preserve the settlement and community-worship traditions of the pioneers who first farmed the land east of Fort Worth.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Richard H. Calloway
  • · Catherine Calloway

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Site of Bird's Fort

Arlington, TX

In 1840 Jonathan Bird raised a fort along the Military Road linking the Red River to Austin, part of the young Republic of Texas's effort to hold and settle its northern frontier. Nearby in 1843, Republic commissioners signed a major treaty setting a boundary line between Indian nations and white settlements, and the battered survivors of the failed Snively Expedition sought shelter here. The spot sat at the crossroads of diplomacy, migration, and conflict on the Texas prairie.

Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838

Arlington, TX

In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel T. Journey led some ninety northeast Texas frontiersmen on a punitive raid against Indians who had struck their homes in present-day Fannin County. The trail carried them into what is now Tarrant County, where they attacked a small Native village. The episode was among the earliest recorded Anglo-American incursions into north Texas, part of the violent process that opened the region to white settlement.

Site of Bird's Fort

Arlington, TX

In 1841 Gen. Edward H. Tarrant authorized Jonathan Bird to plant a fort and settlement near a crescent lake—the first Anglo-American colonizing attempt in present Tarrant County. Hunger and conflict scattered the Red River settlers, and in 1843 the disbanded Snively expedition, disarmed by U.S. troops, drifted through the abandoned post. That September, Republic officials and leaders of nine Native nations signed the Bird's Fort Treaty here, drawing a line between Indian lands and colonization.

Jesse Chisholm

Arlington, TX

Jesse Chisholm, born of a Scottish father and Cherokee mother, was a scout, trader, and interpreter fluent in dozens of Indian languages who negotiated for the Republic of Texas and Sam Houston, including a peace conference near here at Bird's Fort in 1843. He is remembered for the wagon route he marked across Oklahoma and Kansas, which cowboys adopted to drive Texas longhorns north to railheads. After the Civil War wrecked the state's economy, those drives sent five-dollar cattle to thirty-dollar markets, and the Chisholm Trail became the most famous of the great cattle roads.