Huson Cemetery
Farmersville, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Allen Daniel and his family came to Texas from Tennessee in 1847. He and his wife Elizabeth were the parents of eight children. They settled in this area in 1850 and Daniel purchased 480 acres of land in May 1851. Less than one year later, on February 25, 1852, he died and was buried on his land. Allen and Elizabeth Daniel's daughter, Tennessee P. Daniel, was married to D.E. Huson. Tennessee Huson bought the family land from her mother in 1875, and it was during her ownership that the property surrounding her father's grave was given to the community as a public cemetery. It gradually became known as Huson Cemetery. Those interred in this historic graveyard include many pioneers of the area, including the Daniel, Huson, Wilcoxson, and Redwine families. John Hendrex and William Piunckney Chapman, who are credited with naming the town of Farmersville, and William Gotcher, who donated land for the town square, are buried here along with members of their families. Also interred here are many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families. The cemetery contains hundreds of marked and unmarked graves. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Allen Daniel brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1847 and bought 480 acres here in 1851, only to die and be buried on his own land the following year. His daughter Tennessee, who married D. E. Huson, later gave the ground around her father's grave to the community as a public cemetery. Among the hundreds of marked and unmarked graves lie town founders, pioneer families, and many former slaves and their descendants, including the Nelson, Sneed, Glass, and Bryson families.
Why it matters
A single burial ground holding pioneer founders alongside formerly enslaved families quietly records the full, entwined community of a 19th-century Texas town.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Allen Daniel
- · Tennessee P. Daniel Huson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bradley Cemetery
McKinney, TX
Edward Bradley brought his family from Kentucky in the 1840s as members of the Peters Colony, building a log home on a branch of Wilson's Creek in what is now McKinney. A nearby hillside became the family graveyard and then a community cemetery, holding eleven marked headstones and many unmarked graves — including, in a wooded plot to the south, an enslaved people's cemetery marked with bois d'arc wood. The oldest documented burial is Edward Bradley himself, who died in 1855.
Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
Farmersville began in 1849 as a settlement on the Jefferson-McKinney Road, named by pioneers for their chief occupation. It gathered churches, a school, and a public square, incorporated in 1873, and grew into a farm-trade center famous in the 1930s as the "Onion Capital of North Texas," shipping over a thousand carloads a year. Among its residents was Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived here before entering the Army.
Farmersville I.O.O.F. Cemetery
Farmersville, TX
Farmersville grew from the 1850s out of the earlier pioneer settlement of Sugar Hill, taking its name from the farming background of its settlers. In 1875 the Independent Order of Odd Fellows chartered Pride Lodge No. 208 here, and in 1899 the fraternal order set aside this hilltop as a cemetery. Enlarged to 25 landscaped acres, it holds a 1902 mausoleum and carved statuary, and still chronicles the town's history through the lives of those buried here.
First Baptist Church of Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
On a spring day in 1865, as the Civil War drew to its close, fifteen charter members gathered under a brush arbor at this Collin County site to organize Farmersville's First Baptist Church, calling the Rev. John C. Averitt as their first pastor. The congregation worshiped in homes and the Masonic Hall before building a simple frame church in 1877, its steeple bell announcing news to the town. A growing membership replaced it in 1900 with the present brick sanctuary, a picturesque blend of architectural styles crowned with pressed-metal roofing and flanking towers.