HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

J. E. Foust & Sons, Funeral Directors

Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas

Marker Inscription

John E. Foust (1861-1926) moved to Grapevine in 1880 and started a general merchandise store which stocked coffins. He gradually added other services and with the help of his wife Daisy (Huitt) (1876-1963) established a funeral company. A civic leader, Foust also assisted in the development of other area businesses. His son John E. Foust, II (1898-1978), joined the firm in 1923. Following his father's death he managed the Funeral Home and mercantile store until the 1960s. For over 100 years Foust family members have served in the business and civic activities of Grapevine. (1981)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

John E. Foust (1861–1926) came to Grapevine in 1880 and opened a general store that, among its goods, stocked coffins. Step by step—and with the help of his wife Daisy—he built those sidelines into a full funeral company while serving as a civic leader who helped grow other area businesses. His son joined in 1923 and ran both the funeral home and the store into the 1960s, and Foust family members served Grapevine's business and civic life for more than a century.

Why it matters

The Foust story shows how a frontier general store evolved into a lasting family enterprise, illustrating the roots of small-town commerce and community leadership in North Texas.

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

Related people

  • · John E. Foust
  • · Daisy Huitt Foust
  • · John E. Foust II

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Tarrant County State Bank Building

Grapevine, TX

Built in 1897 as retail space, this brick Grapevine building was bought and remodeled by the Tarrant County State Bank in 1921, then became home to the Grapevine Sun newspaper in 1947. Its Classical Revival facade—stepped parapet, stone coping, and four pilasters beneath a dentilled cornice—marks the confident commercial architecture of a growing North Texas town. The building's changing tenants trace the everyday commerce and civic life of Main Street.

The Grapevine Sun

Grapevine, TX

Nineteen-year-old Benjamin R. Wall founded the Grapevine Sun in 1895, and two years later sold it to English-born James E. Keeling, beginning an 80-year family newspaper run. Keeling's son Ed edited the weekly with his wife's help from 1912, and after his death in 1953 his daughter Zena Keeling Oxford took the editor's chair while her husband set the type. The paper printed mostly encouraging local news until its 1976 sale ended three generations of family ownership.

Jellico

Southlake, TX

Jellico grew up around Robert Emmett Wilson's general store in the 1880s and took its name, and a post office, in 1898—borrowed from a Tennessee town the settlers had left behind. For a moment it had the full kit of a Texas farming village: cotton gin, blacksmith, grist mill, syrup press, and school. Falling cotton prices after 1907 hollowed it out, and by 1912 the store had closed and the school had merged away.

Commercial Horticulture in Euless

Euless, TX

Euless's sandy, well-drained soil made it a natural cradle for commercial horticulture, an industry pioneered here beginning in the 1800s. Kentucky native Ambrose H. Boyd founded Tarrant County Nurseries in 1879, and his son John helped organize the state's nurserymen's association; Arch N. Cannon, trained under Boyd, launched Euless Nurseries in 1897 and bred his own fruit and rose varieties, including the "Cannon's Wonderful" and a rose named "Louise." Shipping stock across the region, these families made nursery growing the area's most profitable enterprise well into the twentieth century.