Greenwood Cemetery
Bells, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Burial site for early settlers of Fannin and Grayson counties. Commonly called "Jenkins Cemetery" as access was through John J. Jenkins' farm. First usage date is unknown; oldest stones have had lettering erased by weather. Earliest dated stone is for Jas. P. Montgomery, who died in 1869. On March 31, 1882, W. S. Roddy formally deeded the cemetery site in trust for local citizens. Wooden markers at many graves were destroyed by grass fire in 1935. The neglected cemetery was restored in 1972 through efforts of Lt. Col. and Mrs. Wm. K. Langner, descendants of John J. Jenkins.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery served early settlers of Fannin and Grayson counties, and was long called 'Jenkins Cemetery' because access ran through John J. Jenkins's farm. Its oldest stones have been worn blank by weather, and the earliest legible date belongs to James P. Montgomery, who died in 1869. Formally deeded in trust in 1882, the neglected grounds—many wooden markers lost to a 1935 grass fire—were restored in 1972 by descendants of Jenkins.
Why it matters
The burial ground preserves the memory of the pioneer families who first broke ground in North Texas, even as time and fire erased many of their names.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The years after the Civil War were a time of hard settlement across North Texas. Families pushed into Fannin and Grayson counties to break new ground, raise crops, and build lives on land that was still, in living memory, frontier. They came with few resources and buried their dead in whatever ground the community set aside.
This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era on the local scale, less about national politics than about the daily work of putting down roots. A burial ground was often one of the first shared institutions a settlement created, sometimes before it had a church building or a schoolhouse.
Such cemeteries tell you where the living were. Access to this one ran through a local farm, and it gathered the pioneers of two adjoining counties into a single resting place. Its very existence marks a community taking shape in newly settled country.
People & events
For years the place was known simply as Jenkins Cemetery, because the way in led across John J. Jenkins's farm, a reminder of how intertwined private land and communal need were on the frontier. The name people used every day came not from a founder's grand gesture but from the practical matter of how you reached the graves.
Time has been unkind to its earliest records. The oldest stones have had their lettering scoured blank by weather, so we cannot know who was first laid to rest here. The earliest date anyone can still read belongs to James P. Montgomery, who died in 1869, an anchor point in a history that otherwise fades into the worn stone.
The ground was formally secured in 1882, when W. S. Roddy deeded the cemetery in trust for local citizens, turning informal use into a lasting commitment. Then in 1935 a grass fire swept through and destroyed the wooden markers that stood over many graves, erasing names that had never been cut in stone. The neglected cemetery might have been lost entirely had descendants of John J. Jenkins not restored it in 1972.
Its place in the American story
A pioneer cemetery like this one is a quiet archive of American settlement. It records not the famous but the ordinary families who did the actual work of turning frontier into farmland, and it preserves their memory precisely where they lived and died.
It also embodies a struggle repeated across the country: the fight against forgetting. Weather blanking the oldest stones, fire consuming the wooden markers, decades of neglect, all of it works to erase the past. The 1935 grass fire that destroyed so many markers is a stark example of how fragile these records are, and how much depends on someone caring enough to remember.
That is why the 1972 restoration matters beyond this one plot. When descendants returned to tend and rescue the graves of their forebears, they were doing what countless American families have done, refusing to let the pioneers who came before them vanish without a trace. The impulse to formally deed the ground in trust and, generations later, to restore it, reflects a deep and widely shared belief that the dead of the founding generation are worth honoring.
If you visit
Come here for the stones themselves, and for what they cannot tell you. Some of the oldest are worn perfectly smooth, their names lost to a century and more of Texas weather, and standing before a blank marker is its own kind of history lesson, a lesson in how much time can take.
Look for the older monuments and read the ground as much as the inscriptions. Remember as you walk that many graves here were once marked only in wood, and that a single grass fire in 1935 swept those markers away, so that some of the people resting here now lie in spots no stone records at all.
For a traveler drawn to the human texture of frontier North Texas, this is a moving and understated stop. It is a place restored by love rather than fame, tended because families chose to remember. Approach it quietly, respect the peace of the grounds, and let it be the reflective pause in a day of exploring Grayson and Fannin county history.
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 P. Montgomery
- · John J. Jenkins
Themes & tags
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