HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil WarReconstruction & Gilded Age

Harrison Cemetery

Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas

Marker Inscription

When first used, this one-acre cemetery belonged to Tarrant County pioneer D.C. Harrison. The earliest known grave is that of Mary E. Harrison (1864-71). Several early settlers used this site, including R.A. Randol (1850-1922), the operator of Randol Mill, who bought this tract in 1895 and deeded it forever as a burial ground. Graves here number about sixty and include those of the Edward Deason Family, Randol's first wife Ronda (Harrison) (1859-82), his brother John C. Randol, who died in an 1894 mill accident, and Nancy Cannon Harrison (1833-83), mother of Ronda Harrison Randol. (1982)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This one-acre burial ground began on the land of Tarrant County pioneer D.C. Harrison, its earliest known grave that of young Mary E. Harrison in 1871. In 1895 R.A. Randol, operator of the nearby Randol Mill, bought the tract and deeded it forever as a cemetery. Its roughly sixty graves gather early settler families, including Randol's brother John, killed in an 1894 mill accident.

Why it matters

The cemetery preserves the intertwined lives of the farming and milling families who settled the Fort Worth countryside before it became a city.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · D.C. Harrison
  • · R.A. Randol
  • · Ronda Harrison Randol

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionIndustry & InventionFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Jopling-Melear Log Cabin

Arlington, TX

George Washington Jopling raised this log cabin in 1863 in the Johnson Station community for his wife Catherine and their large family. A farmer, cattleman, and cotton gin owner, Jopling helped organize the local Masonic lodge before deeding the enlarged cabin to his daughter Jane and her husband, blacksmith Z. T. Melear. Moved to its present site in 1970, it preserves the world of North Texas pioneer families.

Archibald Franklin Leonard

Haltom City, TX

Born in Pennsylvania and married in Missouri, Archibald Franklin Leonard joined a wave of neighbors migrating to Texas in 1845 and took up land in the Peters Colony near present-day Grapevine. A church leader and enterprising merchant, he opened—with Henry Clay Daggett—the first civilian store in Fort Worth, served as Tarrant County's first county clerk, and sat in the Twelfth Texas Legislature. He helped lay out Grapevine, ran a mercantile there, and in 1856 established Leonard's Mill on the Trinity River, around which the community later known as Randol Mill grew.

Eastern Cattle Trail

Fort Worth, TX

A block of native Trinity River stone here marks the dusty path that made Fort Worth. From the end of the Civil War until the railroad arrived in 1876, great herds of longhorns were driven up Rusk Street and across the river, resting in the valley below before the long push north to Abilene, Kansas. This route — the Eastern or McCoy Trail, which joined the Chisholm Trail at the Red River — earned Fort Worth its lasting nickname, 'Cow Town.'

Fort Worth "Where the West Begins"

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth began in 1849 as a U.S. Army dragoon post named by Major Ripley Arnold for his old commander, General William Jenkins Worth, guarding the edge of Anglo settlement. After the fort's brief military life, the town it spawned boomed once millions of longhorns began fording the Trinity here on their way up the Chisholm Trail, earning the nickname "Cowtown." The railroad's 1876 arrival turned it into one of the world's great cattle markets, and later meatpacking, oil, and aircraft plants carried its growth into the modern era.