Fuget Cemetery

🏛️The era

In the early 1840s North Texas was still largely open country, and the Republic of Texas wanted it settled. One of its tools was the Peters Colony, an empresario grant that brought families into the region in exchange for land. Settlers who met the terms could receive large tracts, and a married couple could claim 640 acres, a full square mile, which is the size of the tract recorded on this marker.

Those settlers laid the groundwork for Dallas County and its neighbors. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and Dallas County was organized soon afterward. Local government was new and small, and a county sheriff in those years kept order across a wide and thinly settled area.

The twentieth century then brought a very different kind of change to this same ground. Aviation grew quickly after World War I, and cities competed to host airfields. Around this small cemetery, farmland gave way to runways, first for the Army and then for the Navy, as the Dallas-Fort Worth area became a center of military aviation.

👥People & events

The land's recorded story begins with Rowland and Anna Huitt, whose name also appears as Hewitt. They came from Arkansas as Peters colonists and received a patent to 640 acres here in 1843. When Rowland's brother John, the Dallas County sheriff, died in 1847, Rowland finished out his term and became the county's second sheriff. It is a small detail, but it shows how much early county government depended on a few families.

The burials came later. The oldest grave with a surviving marker belongs to J. H. Snow and dates to 1864, during the Civil War, but there may be older unmarked graves. Over the following decades the cemetery took in members of pioneer Grand Prairie families, many infants (a reminder of how often children died young then), and veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I. The last burial was in 1951.

The cemetery's name holds a small mystery. By oral tradition it is named for the Fuget family, also spelled Fugat or Fugitt, who lived in the area in the 1800s. Yet no headstone here bears their name, and their connection to the land has never been confirmed. The marker says so plainly.

In 1928 the City of Dallas leased 300 acres of the surrounding farmland to the U.S. Army, which developed it as Hensley Field. In 1941 the property became a U.S. Naval Air Station, and since 1949 Navy personnel have looked after the graveyard, so military caretakers have long watched over pioneer families' graves.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

This small cemetery holds a century of American history on one piece of ground. It starts with the Peters Colony, which reflects how Texas and the wider American West used land grants to draw settlers onto the frontier. It then passes through county-building in the new state of Texas and ends with the rise of military aviation in the twentieth century.

The graves also mark the country's wars. Veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I are buried here, so this rural burial ground connects to the moment America became a world power. The later airfield around it, first Army and then Navy, ties the site to the buildup of military aviation around World War II.

There is also a lesson about historical honesty. The marker says openly that the Fuget family's link to the cemetery "has not been determined". Local tradition and documented fact do not always match, and good history keeps them separate. The cemetery's continued care, first by families and then by the Navy, reflects the American habit of honoring its dead even after the world around them has completely changed.

🧭If you visit

The cemetery sits in Grand Prairie, on land that was once farm country and later part of the Hensley Field air station. That setting is the point of the visit: a pioneer burial ground surrounded by twentieth-century military and urban development. Access may depend on the current use of the surrounding property, so check locally before you go and respect any posted restrictions.

If you can walk among the graves, look for the oldest dated stone, from 1864, and remember that there may be older unmarked graves around it. The small infant graves and the veterans' markers from the Spanish-American War and World War I each tell part of the story. You won't find a Fuget headstone, which is exactly the mystery the marker describes.

For a road trip, this stop fits well into a day exploring the Dallas-Fort Worth area's early history. Combine it with other Peters Colony and pioneer-cemetery markers across Dallas and Tarrant counties, and you can trace how a patchwork of 640-acre family farms became one of the country's largest metropolitan areas.