Grapevine Cemetery
Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Samuel D. Coble (1830-1890), joined later by his brother Allen B. Coble (1836-1906), settled here in the 1850s. In 1878 they sold 4.5 acres of land at this site for use as a public cemetery. The oldest known grave is that of Louisa C. Guiry (d. 1860), who died at the age of 22. Many pioneer settlers of the area are buried here, including Barton H. Starr (1850-1912), elected the first Mayor of Grapevine in 1907, and James Tracy Morehead (1809-1897), who served as the second Judge of Tarrant County. Additional land south of the original tract was acquired in 1925. (1980)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Coble brothers, Samuel and Allen, settled here in the 1850s and in 1878 sold four and a half acres for a public cemetery. The oldest known grave belongs to 22-year-old Louisa Guiry, who died in 1860, and the grounds hold many of the area's pioneer settlers—among them Barton H. Starr, Grapevine's first mayor, and James Tracy Morehead, an early Tarrant County judge. Additional land was added in 1925 as the community grew.
Why it matters
A pioneer cemetery is a community's memory in miniature, gathering the founders and first citizens whose lives built a North Texas town.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1850s, North Texas was frontier country. Settlers came from Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and other states looking for fertile prairie land, and the area that became Grapevine drew them with good soil and open grassland. The settlement took its name from the wild mustang grapes that grew thickly on the surrounding prairie.
Life on that frontier was hard and often short. Disease, childbirth, and accidents took many people young, and the first burials in a new settlement often happened on family land before any formal cemetery existed. The oldest known grave here, from 1860, dates to that early, raw period, on the eve of the Civil War.
By 1878, when the Coble brothers set aside land for a public cemetery, the region was in transition. Reconstruction was ending, farms and towns were becoming established, and communities were starting to build lasting civic institutions. A public cemetery was a sign that a settlement meant to stay.
People & events
Samuel D. Coble settled here in the 1850s, and his younger brother Allen B. Coble later joined him. In 1878 the brothers sold four and a half acres at this spot to serve as a public burying ground. It was a practical act of community-building: a shared place where families of every background could lay their dead to rest.
The oldest known grave belongs to Louisa C. Guiry, who died in 1860 at just twenty-two. The marker tells us little else about her. Her early death is a quiet reminder of how fragile life was in those years, and of how many of the people who settled the frontier never saw the towns they helped begin.
Others buried here shaped the community's public life. James Tracy Morehead, born in 1809, served as the second judge of Tarrant County and lived until 1897, long enough to see the county grow from scattered settlements into an organized place. Barton H. Starr was elected Grapevine's first mayor in 1907, marking the town's step into formal self-government. Around them lie many of the area's pioneer families. As the town grew, the cemetery needed more room, and additional land to the south was added in 1925.
Its place in the American story
Pioneer cemeteries like this one are among the most honest records of America's westward expansion. Official histories tend to remember founders and officeholders. A cemetery remembers everyone: young women like Louisa Guiry, infants, farmers, and judges, all side by side. Read together, the gravestones form a population history of a frontier community.
The Coble brothers' land sale also reflects a national pattern. In countless American towns, early landowners donated or sold ground for cemeteries, churches, and schools, laying down the civic framework that later governments built on. Grapevine's journey from 1850s settlement to an incorporated town with a mayor in 1907 follows a path traveled by thousands of communities across the West.
Today Grapevine sits at the heart of a vast metropolitan region. That makes a place like this even more valuable: it is a fixed point connecting a fast-changing modern city to the families who first broke the prairie.
If you visit
Walk slowly and read the stones. The oldest sections of a pioneer cemetery often have weathered markers, hand-carved names, family plots grouped together, and inscriptions that hint at life stories. See if you can find the names mentioned on the historical marker and notice the dates. Many of the people here were born before Texas became a state.
Please remember that this is an active burial ground. Keep to the paths, don't make rubbings on fragile old stones, and be respectful of families who may be visiting graves.
Grapevine has a historic downtown that makes a natural companion to this stop, and the town is easy to reach from anywhere in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. A short walk among these graves is a peaceful counterpoint to the busy region around it, and a reminder of how recently all of this was open prairie.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Samuel D. Coble
- · Allen B. Coble
- · Barton H. Starr
- · James Tracy Morehead
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Tracy Morehead
Grapevine, TX
Virginia-born James Tracy Morehead brought his family to the raw frontier of newly organized Tarrant County in 1852 and within two years was chosen its third Chief Justice. He is remembered for renaming the settlement of Dunnville "Grapevine" after the nearby Grape Vine Springs, and in 1858 he oversaw the elections that organized neighboring Parker County. His career traces the machinery of local government taking shape on the North Texas frontier.
Dorris-Brock House
Grapevine, TX
Dr. William E. Dorris brought his family to Grapevine in 1871 after a three-month wagon journey from Mississippi, having served as a Confederate captain during the Civil War. He bought a 37-acre farm near good water and put down roots in the growing community, where his son continued the family's medical practice for decades. The Folk Victorian farmhouse later passed to the Brock family, who raised twelve children here across 85 years.
Grapevine
Grapevine, TX
Named for the wild mustang grapes that grew thick across the area, Grapevine took shape after Ambrose and Susannah Foster arrived from Missouri in 1845 and their family gathered land at the community's heart. Cattle raising dominated before the Civil War, with beef driven to nearby Camp Worth, and the arrival of the Cotton Belt Railroad in 1888 turned the town into a shipping hub for cotton, grain and dairy. Over the following century it absorbed a lake, paved highways, and eventually the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth Airport within its limits.
Torian Log Cabin
Grapevine, TX
This hand-hewn log cabin was raised along a creek at the edge of the Cross Timbers near the pioneer settlement of Dove, on a headright taken up in 1845 by Francis Throop, a Peters colonist from Missouri. J. C. Wiley bought the land in 1868 and sold it in 1886 to Kentucky farmer John R. Torian, whose family lived in the cabin into the 1940s. It was moved about four miles to this site in 1976.