Hawkins Cemetery
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for Harvey Hawkins (1804-1869), a pioneer settler who came to Texas from Tennessee and first settled in Rusk County, the Hawkins Cemetery is the final resting place for families of the Tate Springs community. In 1848, Hawkins married Mary Ann Elizabeth (Elliott) Hitt Turner (1817-1868) and they later traveled by wagon to what would beocme Tarrant County. A preemptive land grand was issued to Hawkins for 160 acres in Tarrant County by Sam Houston, governor of the State of Texas, in January 1860. The cemetery began as a family plot located in the center of the property where the Hawkins couple and their children are buried. According to legend, a slave named Poly Penn was the first burial. No gravestone has been found but the location was marked on an early map. The earliest marked gravesite is that of Mary Hawkins in 1868. Rebekah Hawkins, Mary's daughter, married Jason Bryant Little before moving with her family to Tarrant County and settled near the Hawkins family. After Jason returned from fighting in the Civil War, they opened an elementary school. Their home was used as a stage coach stop on the Star Mail Route from Johnson Station, Texas to Fort Worth. A large arched monument stands at the north end of the cemetery, marking the gravesites of Rebekah, Jason and their families. In 1890, property owner George W. Kee sold the cemetery grounds to the community for use as a public burial ground. The Kee family is buried on the norther section of the cemetery. Additional acreage was acquired in 1919 from the Edwards and Tunnell families. Members of the community established a Cemetery Association in 1949 to maintain the cemetery and its records. Hawkins Cemetery chronicles the pioneer families that settled the area in the mid-1800s. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2015
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for Tennessee-born pioneer Harvey Hawkins, who received a 160-acre land grant signed by Governor Sam Houston in 1860, this cemetery began as a family plot for the Tate Springs community. By local memory an enslaved man named Poly Penn was the first buried here, though his grave is unmarked; the earliest lettered stone dates to 1868. As the settlement grew, the plot became a public burial ground in 1890, chronicling the pioneer families who put down roots in the mid-1800s.
Why it matters
The cemetery records the settlers, soldiers, and enslaved people whose intertwined lives built early Tarrant County.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Harvey Hawkins came west, the country around present-day Arlington was open, unfenced frontier. In the years around Texas statehood and the decade that followed, settlers pushed into what would become Tarrant County by wagon, staking claims through land grants and building small farming communities out of raw prairie. Tate Springs was one of these fledgling settlements, and this cemetery grew directly out of it.
Land was the great inducement. Hawkins received a preemptive grant of 160 acres, and the paperwork that made it his was signed in January 1860 by Sam Houston, then governor of the state — a tangible link between one family's farm and the towering figure of early Texas history.
This was also a society built in part on slavery, on the eve of the Civil War. The same frontier communities that celebrated pioneer grit also held enslaved people, and the war that soon followed would send local men to fight while reshaping everything the settlers had begun. A frontier cemetery like this one holds all of that history side by side.
People & events
The cemetery takes its name from Harvey Hawkins (1804–1869), a pioneer who came from Tennessee by way of Rusk County. In 1848 he married Mary Ann Elizabeth Elliott, and the couple later traveled by wagon to the land that would become their home. The burial ground began simply, as a family plot in the center of their property, where the Hawkins family lies.
By local memory, the very first person buried here was an enslaved man named Poly Penn. No gravestone marks the spot, and none has been found, though its location was recorded on an early map — a fact that tells you a great deal about who was remembered with a carved stone and who was not. The earliest marked grave is that of Mary Hawkins, in 1868.
The next generation deepened the story. Mary's daughter Rebekah married Jason Bryant Little and settled near her family. After Jason returned from fighting in the Civil War, the couple opened an elementary school, and their home served as a stagecoach stop on the Star Mail Route running from Johnson Station toward Fort Worth. A large arched monument at the north end marks their family's graves. In 1890, landowner George W. Kee sold the grounds to the community as a public burial ground, and later acreage came from the Edwards and Tunnell families. In 1949, residents formed a Cemetery Association to keep the grounds and its records.
Its place in the American story
A pioneer cemetery is one of the most honest documents a community leaves behind, because everyone ends up in it. Hawkins Cemetery records the intertwined lives that actually built early Tarrant County — settlers, soldiers, teachers, and the enslaved — in a way no single monument to a great man ever could.
It captures the machinery of American westward expansion in small, concrete pieces: a land grant signed by a famous governor, a stagecoach stop carrying the mail between frontier settlements, a home turned into a schoolhouse. These are the ordinary institutions through which a wilderness became a settled country.
And it does not look away from the harder truth. The unmarked grave of Poly Penn, remembered by name but denied a stone, embodies a national reality — that the same communities celebrated for pioneer courage were also built on slavery. Reading that absence honestly is part of what these historic cemeteries preserve.
If you visit
Come to this Arlington cemetery expecting a quiet, reflective place rather than a grand attraction. The stories here are told in stone and open ground, and they reward slow, attentive walking. Seek out the large arched monument at the north end, which marks the graves of Rebekah and Jason Little and their family, and let it lead you back through the generations.
As you move among the marked graves, hold in mind the ones you cannot see. Somewhere near the center of the old plot lies Poly Penn, remembered in the community's memory though no stone names him. Standing there is a chance to think about everyone a place like this holds, not only those whose names were carved.
A historic cemetery makes a thoughtful, unhurried stop on a day exploring the older corners of Tarrant County — a reminder that the region's history is written not only in its landmarks but in the people laid to rest by the families who first settled the land.
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
- · Harvey Hawkins
- · Poly Penn
- · Jason Bryant Little
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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