Elmwood Cemetery
Bowie, Montague County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early settler James W. Stallings donated the first portion of land for the establishment of a cemetery for area residents at this site in 1880. Two years later, the town of Bowie was platted near the cemetery site, along the route of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. The first burial at Elmwood Cemetery was that of Willie B. Nelson (d. June 10, 1880), son of Francis M. and Mary Nelson. Stallings later buried several of his own family members at the site, including his wife Sarah E. (Parker), his granddaughter and his daughter, all in 1882. In 1884, 1901 and 1905, G.W. and Emily Tinkle conveyed additional land to the cemetery, and further additions were made to the site in later years. The Bowie Cemetery Association formed during the early years of the cemetery’s existence, although the exact date of its organization is unknown. The association handled the business of the cemetery until 1938, when the cemetery association officially deeded the burial ground to the city of Bowie. In 1981, due to the expansion of Lake Amon G. Carter, the graves located at Tarter Cemetery were relocated to Elmwood. Portions of a native stone wall that was constructed along Patterson and Nelson Streets by employees of the Civilian Conservation Corps 1935-1937 remain today. The cemetery contains burials of veterans from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Today, Elmwood Cemetery continues to serve the citizens of Bowie and the surrounding area while reminding them of the early pioneer settlers of the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settler James W. Stallings donated the first land for this cemetery in 1880, two years before the town of Bowie was platted nearby along the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. Willie B. Nelson, a settler's young son, was the first burial, and Stallings would soon lay several of his own family here. Over the decades the grounds grew, gained a native-stone wall built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, and became the resting place of veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Why it matters
It ties together railroad-driven town founding, New Deal public works, and generations of military service in a single North Texas burial ground.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
North Texas in the last decades of the nineteenth century was being remade by two forces: barbed wire, which let settlers fence the open range, and the railroad, which decided where towns would live or die. Where the tracks went, people and commerce followed; a settlement lucky enough to sit on a rail line had a future, and one bypassed by it often faded.
Montague County, near the Red River frontier, was still young country in 1880. Settlers were arriving to claim land and put down roots, and the first institutions a community needed were simple and human ones — a place to worship, a place to teach the children, and a place to bury the dead. Often the cemetery came first, because death does not wait for a town to be platted.
That is exactly the sequence here. The burial ground was established before the town it would serve even existed. When the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad laid its route through, the town of Bowie was platted alongside it — and a scattering of frontier homesteads began to cohere into a real community with the cemetery already at its edge.
People & events
It began with a gift. In 1880 an early settler named James W. Stallings donated the first portion of land so that area residents would have a proper cemetery. Two years later Bowie was platted nearby along the new rail line, but the ground Stallings gave was already doing its solemn work.
The very first person laid to rest here was not an old pioneer but a child — Willie B. Nelson, son of Francis M. and Mary Nelson, who died on June 10, 1880. Grief soon touched the donor's own household as well: in 1882 Stallings buried several of his own family at the site, including his wife Sarah, his daughter, and his granddaughter, all in a single hard year. The place he had given to others became the resting place of his own.
The cemetery grew as the community did. G.W. and Emily Tinkle deeded additional land in 1884, 1901, and 1905, and more was added over the years. A cemetery association formed early on to manage its affairs and did so until 1938, when it handed the grounds over to the city of Bowie. In the 1930s, crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps built a native stone wall along Patterson and Nelson Streets, portions of which still stand. And in 1981, when the expansion of Lake Amon G. Carter required it, the graves from nearby Tarter Cemetery were carefully moved here — one community's dead gathered in to rest beside another's.
Its place in the American story
Elmwood Cemetery holds three great American threads in a single plot of ground. The first is the way the railroads built the West: a town appearing because the tracks came through, its life organized around the line that connected it to the wider world. Bowie exists in its modern form because of that decision, and the cemetery predates and witnesses it.
The second is the New Deal, visible in the native stone wall raised by the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1935 and 1937. The CCC put hundreds of thousands of young men to work during the Great Depression building the enduring public infrastructure — parks, walls, roads, shelters — that Americans still use today. A stretch of that labor stands right here, ordinary and permanent.
The third is service. The cemetery holds veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam — generation after generation from one small community answering the nation's call. Few places gather so much of the American story into so quiet a space.
If you visit
Elmwood Cemetery serves the citizens of Bowie, in Montague County, Texas, and it rewards a visitor who reads it slowly. Start with the stone wall along Patterson and Nelson Streets: the surviving portions were laid by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, and running your eye along that masonry is a direct connection to Depression-era hands.
Walk among the older sections and you'll find the layers of the town's history — the earliest settlers, the family plots, and the graves of veterans spanning more than a century of American conflicts. Take a moment at the oldest markers to remember that this ground held its first burial before the town was even platted.
For a road trip through North Texas, Bowie makes a natural stop along the old Fort Worth and Denver corridor, and Elmwood offers a genuine sense of how a railroad town grew up around its dead. Come respectfully, keep to the paths, and let the range of dates on the stones — pioneers, wartime service, families gathered in from a vanished neighboring cemetery — tell you how much a single burial ground can carry.
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 W. Stallings
- · Willie B. Nelson
Themes & tags
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