Handley Cemetery
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground originally served the pioneer settlers of the Handley Community, which developed here soon after the Texas and Pacific Railroad built a line to the area in 1876. The earliest marked grave is that of Jane E. Thomas (1832-1878). A church building, constructed on adjacent land in 1882, was located here for 48 years. Several early residents buried at this site, including Civil War veteran Maj. James M. Handley (d. 1906), for whom the town was named, were later reinterred in the nearby Rose Hill Cemetery. The last burial here was in 1967. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Texas and Pacific Railroad reached this area in 1876, a community quickly took root and needed a burying ground. Handley Cemetery's earliest marked grave, that of Jane E. Thomas, dates to 1878, and a church stood on adjacent land here for nearly half a century. The town took its name from Civil War veteran Maj. James M. Handley, and though several early residents were later reinterred at nearby Rose Hill, burials continued here until 1967.
Why it matters
The cemetery shows how the arrival of the railroad conjured whole communities into being across late-19th-century Texas, leaving their earliest chapters written in stone.
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Related people
- · Jane E. Thomas
- · James M. Handley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Handley Church of Christ
Fort Worth, TX
A settlement first called Turkey Knob took the name Handley after 1876, when the Texas & Pacific Railroad built a depot and section house nearby. Local Protestants worshiped together in a union building until 1905, when J. Dan Thomas invited about twenty-two neighbors into his home to organize the Handley Church of Christ. The congregation soon outgrew that start and has kept to this location since 1919.
City of Arlington
Arlington, TX
Arlington grew up where the Blackland Prairie meets the Eastern Cross Timbers, on land once dotted with Native American villages along Village Creek. The 1841 Battle of Village Creek and the 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty — signed by the Republic of Texas with the Delaware, Caddo, Waco, Cherokee, and many other tribes — opened the area to settlement, and in 1876 a townsite and Texas and Pacific rail stop was surveyed and named for Robert E. Lee's Virginia home. From a cotton-shipping town it grew into an amusement destination and, wedged between Fort Worth and Dallas, into one of the anchors of a vast modern metroplex, home to UT Arlington, Six Flags, and the Texas Rangers.
First Baptist Church of Arlington
Arlington, TX
This congregation first organized in the 1870s at Johnson Station, an early Tarrant County settlement and stagecoach stop. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad drove a line through the area in 1876 and founded the town of Arlington, the church—like the community's other institutions—picked up and moved to the new rail town. After decades in temporary quarters and successive sanctuaries, including one lost to fire in 1944, the congregation settled at its present site.
Andrew Hayter
Arlington, TX
A Tennessee-born Cumberland Presbyterian preacher, Andrew Shannon Hayter came to Texas around 1850 and eventually settled in Tarrant County, where he founded churches, a school and a Masonic lodge and earned his living as a surveyor. His frontier knowledge made him the natural choice in 1876 to help route the railroad and lay out a small town between Dallas and Fort Worth. Offered the honor of naming it for himself, he instead chose 'Arlington,' after Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate.