Lindale Cemetery
Bowie, Montague County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for the Lindale School District No. 15, the Lindale Cemetery was established in 1880 when J. W. and A. W. Gibbins sold one acre of land for four dollars to school trustees for a burial ground. The first recorded burial on this site was that of E. T. Foster (1849-1883). Others buried here include families such as that of G. A. and Effie Griffin, who came to the Lindale Community in 1923. Other families represented here include Cooper, Ferrell, Griffin, Hill, Huskey, Kilcrease, Lamkin, Lindsey, Morris, Prater and Thomas. In 1893 J. K. and N. E. Thomas sold an additional two acres of land to the cemetery for twenty-five dollars, increasing its size to three acres. Military veterans buried here include participants in World War l and World War ll. In 1999 the cemetery had 241 marked and 15 unmarked graves. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for the Lindale School District, this Montague County burial ground was established in 1880 when the Gibbins family sold a single acre to school trustees for four dollars. The graves gather generations of the farming families — Cooper, Griffin, Thomas and others — who settled the Lindale community, along with veterans of both World Wars. By the close of the century more than 250 graves marked the site.
Why it matters
Small rural cemeteries like Lindale trace the roots of the schools, families, and farm communities that filled North Texas after the frontier era.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1880, the part of North Texas that became this Montague County community was still close to its frontier beginnings. The open range was giving way to fenced farms, and families were arriving to work the land, raise stock, and put down roots. The institutions that anchor rural life — churches, schools, and burial grounds — were being created almost from scratch.
Tellingly, this cemetery takes its name not from a family or a town but from a school district: Lindale School District No. 15. In the settlement era, the country schoolhouse was often the true center of a rural community — the place where neighbors gathered, voted, worshiped, and organized. That a burial ground would be named for the school district says everything about what held these scattered farm families together.
Over the following decades the community moved out of the raw frontier and through the Progressive era into the modern age, absorbing the great changes — including two world wars — that reshaped even the most rural corners of America. The graves here quietly track that whole passage.
People & events
The cemetery began with a modest transaction that reads like a document straight out of settlement-era Texas: in 1880, J. W. and A. W. Gibbins sold one acre of land to the school trustees for a burial ground — for four dollars. The first person recorded as laid to rest here was E. T. Foster, who lived from 1849 to 1883, a man whose short life spanned the very years the surrounding community was taking shape.
The grounds grew as the community did. In 1893, J. K. and N. E. Thomas sold an additional two acres for twenty-five dollars, bringing the cemetery to three acres. And the list of family names reads like a roll call of the people who farmed and settled this country — Cooper, Ferrell, Griffin, Hill, Huskey, Kilcrease, Lamkin, Lindsey, Morris, Prater, Thomas, and more. Among them were G. A. and Effie Griffin, who came to the Lindale community in 1923, part of the steady arrival of families across the generations.
The cemetery also holds those who left home to serve, including veterans of both World War I and World War II. By 1999 a careful count found 241 marked graves and 15 unmarked — a small, densely human record of more than a century of one community's life and losses.
Its place in the American story
Small rural cemeteries like Lindale are among the most reliable maps we have of how America filled in after the frontier era. Follow the surnames and the dates and you can trace the schools, the farms, and the family networks that turned raw land into a settled community.
The naming of the cemetery for a school district points to a deep truth about rural America: the local school was not just a place of learning but the institutional heart of the neighborhood, and its district lines often defined a community's very identity. Here that identity was carried right into the burial ground.
The presence of veterans of both World Wars connects this quiet plot to the largest events of the twentieth century. Even the most remote farm communities sent their sons overseas, and the ripple of national history reached every crossroads. A cemetery like this is where the sweeping American story and the intimate family story finally meet on the same ground.
If you visit
Lindale rewards the visitor willing to slow down and read. Walk the rows and let the surnames accumulate — the same families appear again and again, and you begin to sense the marriages, the neighbors, and the generations that made up a single farming community over more than a century.
Look for the oldest stones first; the earliest burials root the place in the 1880s, and the later plots fan out from there as the community grew. Watch, too, for the small emblems and flags that mark the veterans of the World Wars — a reminder that this rural crossroads sent people into the century's largest conflicts. The mix of carefully carved monuments and simpler, humbler markers tells its own story about the means and lives of the families here.
It makes a quiet, grounding stop on a North Texas back-roads drive — a place to stand for a few minutes among the people who built the surrounding countryside, and to feel how much history a single small acre can hold.
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
- · E. T. Foster
Themes & tags
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