HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Corinth Shiloh Cemetery

Denton, Denton County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Physician and lay preacher Thomas A. Ball and his wife, Nancy (Yeats), came to Denton County from Missouri soon after the Civil War ended in 1865. They settled with their family on land that would become the community of Corinth. The Ball family donated land already in use as a graveyard to the Primitive Baptist Church at Shiloh. The first marked grave is that of William Garrison (d. 1870). In 1880, the Wichita & Dallas Railway named the settlement Corinth. An additional land donation in 1953 enlarged the cemetery to 2.5 acres. The community called the burial ground Shiloh Cemetery for many years until a cemetery association formed in 1959 and members adopted the name Corinth Shiloh Cemetery. Features of the early cemetery include native sandstone markers and decorative mussel shells harvested from nearby creeks. Today, Corinth Shiloh Cemetery chronicles the history of area settlers. Descendants and friends reunite for annual decoration days to clean and decorate the graves of those buried here. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Soon after the Civil War, physician and lay preacher Thomas Ball and his family came from Missouri and settled land that became Corinth. They donated a graveyard already in use to the Primitive Baptist Church at Shiloh, where William Garrison's 1870 grave is the earliest marked. Native sandstone markers and creek-harvested mussel shells still distinguish the old burial ground.

Why it matters

The cemetery chronicles the post-war migration that repopulated North Texas, and its handmade sandstone-and-shell markers preserve the folk traditions of those first settler families.

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Related people

  • · Thomas A. Ball
  • · Nancy Ball

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionMemorial

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