Highland Cemetery
Melissa, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Highland community was established in the mid-1800s as a stop on the stage route between Buckner (approximate 3 miles west of the present site of McKinney) and Bonham. An early settler, Charles H. Wysong, donated 3 acres of land for a community church, school, and cemetery in 1858. The first marked grave, that of Robert Strother, is dated 1861. Many north central Collin county pioneers and their descendants are buried here. The graveyard is cared for by the Highland Cemetery Association, organized more than one hundred years ago. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Highland community grew up in the mid-1800s as a stop on the stagecoach route between Buckner and Bonham, and in 1858 settler Charles H. Wysong gave three acres for a church, school, and cemetery. The oldest marked grave, dated 1861, belongs to Robert Strother, and generations of north central Collin County pioneers rest here. A cemetery association organized more than a century ago still cares for the grounds.
Why it matters
The graveyard anchors the memory of a vanished stagecoach-era community, preserving the pioneers who first settled the north Texas prairie.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1800s, north Texas was a frontier filling up quickly. Families arrived by wagon from Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and elsewhere, drawn by fertile prairie land. Collin County was organized in the 1840s, and its first county seat was Buckner, a small settlement a few miles west of where McKinney stands today. When the county seat moved to McKinney, Buckner faded, but for a time it was a hub of the young county.
Before railroads reached this part of Texas, stagecoach and wagon roads tied settlements together. A stop on the route between Buckner and Bonham, the county seat of neighboring Fannin County, meant a place where travelers rested, mail passed through, and news traveled. Small communities often formed around stops like these, and Highland was one of them.
The cemetery's earliest dates come at a hinge in Texas history. The land was donated in 1858, and the first marked grave dates to 1861, the year Texas left the Union and the Civil War began. The pioneers buried here lived through frontier settlement, war, and the hard years that followed.
People & events
In 1858 an early settler named Charles H. Wysong gave three acres of his land to his neighbors, and it was a generous and far-sighted gift. The land was meant to hold three things a frontier community needed most: a church, a school, and a burial ground. On the frontier, one plot of land often did all three jobs. The same building might hold Sunday worship and weekday lessons, while the graveyard beside it held the community's dead.
The first marked grave belongs to Robert Strother and is dated 1861. The marker does not tell us who he was, and it's best not to guess. What his headstone does tell us is that by then Highland was a settled place, with people who meant to stay and to remember those they lost. Earlier burials may have gone unmarked, as was common on the frontier, but Strother's stone is the oldest that survives.
After him came generations of north central Collin County families, the pioneers and then their children and grandchildren. Just as important are the people who kept the place up. The Highland Cemetery Association was organized more than a century ago and has looked after the grounds ever since. That kind of steady, unglamorous devotion is how most rural cemeteries survive.
Its place in the American story
Across the United States, thousands of small communities like Highland grew up along stage routes and wagon roads, then faded as railroads and highways took traffic elsewhere. Often the only thing left is the cemetery. That makes country graveyards some of the most important historical documents in rural America. Their headstones record names, dates, and family ties that may survive nowhere else.
Wysong's gift also reflects a national pattern. In frontier communities everywhere, the shared church-school-cemetery was the seed of civic life. It was where neighbors first organized and pooled their resources, and it was usually the first thing they built together.
The cemetery association carries that tradition forward. Volunteer associations caring for rural burial grounds are a quiet American institution. Through them, communities that may no longer exist on the map keep tending their history.
If you visit
Highland Cemetery is a place for slow, respectful wandering. Look for the oldest stones, including the 1861 grave of Robert Strother, and notice how styles of carving and lettering change over the decades. Family plots grouped together can show you how kinship networks shaped settlement on the prairie.
Remember that this is an active, cared-for cemetery, maintained by an association that has looked after it for generations. Stay on paths where they exist, don't touch fragile stones, and leave everything as you found it.
The Melissa area has grown quickly in recent decades as the Dallas region spreads north, so this graveyard is now a small pocket of frontier memory in a fast-changing landscape. Pair a visit with a drive toward McKinney and Bonham. You'll be roughly tracing the old stage route that brought travelers to Highland in the first place.
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
- · Charles H. Wysong
- · Robert Strother
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dr. William Edward Throckmorton
Melissa, TX
Born in Virginia in 1795 and dead by 1843, Dr. William Edward Throckmorton left his name on a Texas county though his own life ran its course in the early Republic era. Physicians of his generation were among the essential figures on a thinning frontier, carrying medicine into places that had little else. The county named for him carries that legacy forward.
Scott-Barker House
Melissa, TX
This L-plan Victorian dwelling went up around the 1870s, as the young town of Melissa was taking root in the Blackland Prairie of North Texas. Merchant Louis A. Scott and his wife Louise bought it in 1880, and after 1903 it passed to the Barker family, whose daughters lived here for 85 years. When a devastating tornado tore through Melissa in 1921, the sturdy house lost only a chimney—a small testament to its solid construction and its distinctive dormers and Mansard-type roofs.
Melissa Christian Church
Melissa, TX
This North Texas congregation grew out of religious gatherings held in a local schoolhouse as early as 1868, raising its first sanctuary near this spot in 1878. After a 1921 tornado leveled that building, local contractor W. N. Osburn led church volunteers in erecting the present structure in 1924, giving it modest classical touches like entrance pediments and a dentil cornice. Many worshippers today descend from the church's charter members.
Coffman Cemetery
Anna, TX
This burial ground grew up around the mid-nineteenth-century community of Coffman, on land given by early settler John Coffman, whose son George farmed nearby. The oldest marked grave dates to 1876, and for more than a century the cemetery served as the community's primary resting place. Descendants of many families buried here still live in this corner of Collin County.