Farmersville I.O.O.F. Cemetery
Farmersville, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Farmersville is one of the oldest towns in Collin County. It has historic ties to the antebellum (pre-Civil War) era of Texas and the pioneer settlement of Sugar Hill (1.5 mi. NE), founded by John Yeary. The center of settlement soon shifted to this area in the 1850s with the beginning of Farmersville, a community named for the agricultural background of its pioneer residents. In 1875, Pride Lodge No. 208 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) formed with 15 charter members. In 1899, the organization established a cemetery here on a high hill at the north edge of the town. The Odd Fellows Order, known as the "Three Link Fraternity" for the symbolic use of three chain links representing friendship, love and truth, had its origins in 18th-century England. The earliest marked grave in this cemetery is that of Mattie Robinson Hicks, who died in 1898, the year before the Odd Fellows formally set aside the land as a burial ground. The second oldest marked grave was for a child of G.C. Burkett. Other early graves include those of individuals reinterred here from nearby family cemeteries and rural burial grounds. Enlarged over the years, the Farmersville I.O.O.F. Cemetery today encompasses 25 acres of landscaped grounds. Notable features include a 1902 mausoleum, carved statuary, including one of a sailor, and a wide variety of memorial stones that reflect popular architectural design influences through the years. Still in use, the site now also serves to chronicle the history of Farmerville through the lives of those who made their home here, from the pioneer era to modern times. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Farmersville grew from the 1850s out of the earlier pioneer settlement of Sugar Hill, taking its name from the farming background of its settlers. In 1875 the Independent Order of Odd Fellows chartered Pride Lodge No. 208 here, and in 1899 the fraternal order set aside this hilltop as a cemetery. Enlarged to 25 landscaped acres, it holds a 1902 mausoleum and carved statuary, and still chronicles the town's history through the lives of those buried here.
Why it matters
It reflects the central role fraternal orders like the Odd Fellows played in the civic and charitable life of small nineteenth-century American towns.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Yeary
- · Mattie Robinson Hicks
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Prairie Grove Cemetery
Farmersville, TX
Prairie Grove Cemetery served the rural Aleo community from the late 1800s into the mid-20th century, tied to the Prairie Grove Baptist Church that set aside its land. Its oldest known grave dates to 1895, and it holds victims of the deadly 1927 tornado that struck nearby Nevada. The mother and grandparents of Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived in the area for a time, rest here as well.
Van Winkle Cemetery
Princeton, TX
This burial ground has served the vanished community of Climax since the mid-1800s, when a Missouri farmer named William Warden settled the Blackland Prairie in 1851. At its peak around 1910 Climax held some hundred residents with cotton gins, a school, a church, and a store, but the settlement slowly dwindled to memory. The cemetery honors surveyor David Van Winkle, and among its graves lie a toll-bridge builder, a slave remembered in oral tradition as the earliest burial, and military veterans.
Merit Cemetery
Merit, TX
Merit began as an Upland South farming settlement on the rolling Blackland Prairie of Hunt County, its Methodist congregation organized in 1871 and its name drawn from a visiting judge, William W. Merritt. The railroad's arrival in 1886 spurred cotton, stores, lodges, and a newspaper — and in 1912 robbers famously blew the bank vault open with nitroglycerin for $4,500. The community cemetery, deeded by Dr. Alexander Murchison in 1907, still holds veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam and is one of the county's few surviving swept-grave burial grounds.
McMinn Chapel Cemetery
Nevada, TX
John W. and Evaline McMinn settled this Collin County prairie in 1849, and the community that grew around them took their name. They gave land for a cemetery in 1894, though burials here reach back to 1877, and residents added a church and school to anchor the settlement. When the railroad reached nearby Nevada, families drifted toward the town, and today the graveyard is nearly all that remains of the McMinn community.