Glendale Cemetery
Trinity, Trinity County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Trinity County was created in 1850. Settlers came to this area by 1854. By 1886, a town of about 100 had grown up near the large antebellum Tullos Plantation. In 1887 the Glendale Post Office was established. The earliest known graves in the cemetery are those of four-year-old Ida J. Arnold, who died in 1884, and infant Albert Munson, who was born and died that same year. The earliest adult grave on this site is that of H. W. Threadgill. By 1899, the year of Threadgill's death, Glendale was a boomtown of 1,200 residents due to the success of the J. I. Cameron Lumber Company and the Glendale Orchard Company. Local industry declined after 1900, and by 1914 the population had dwindled to 75. Area residents continued to care for the cemetery, which remains a chronicle of Trinity County history. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Glendale grew up near the antebellum Tullos Plantation, and by the time its post office opened in 1887 a small settlement had taken root. The cemetery's earliest graves—a four-year-old girl and an infant, both from 1884—speak to the hard mortality of frontier childhood. Fueled by the J. I. Cameron Lumber Company and the Glendale Orchard Company, the town boomed to some 1,200 residents by 1899, only to fade to about 75 by 1914 as local industry collapsed. Area families have tended the burial ground ever since.
Why it matters
Glendale's rise and fall traces the boom-and-bust arc of the East Texas lumber economy, and its cemetery preserves the memory of a community that industry made and unmade.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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