Mayberry Park Cemetery
Killeen, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The only remaining legible headstone in this graveyard reveals that the cemetery dates to the late 19th century. The grave of James Moses Cowan (1834-1888) is believed to be one of 12-20 burials. Other graves are marked with plain stones or remain unadorned. According to local tradition, members of the pioneer O.M. Hood family were interred in the cemetery. There was no specific name associated with the cemetery until the mid-20th century, when it became known as Mayberry Park Cemetery. The land became a part of Fort Hood in 1942. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This small graveyard dates to the late nineteenth century, though only one headstone — that of James Moses Cowan, who died in 1888 — remains legible among an estimated dozen to twenty burials. Other graves are marked with plain fieldstones or nothing at all, and local tradition places members of the pioneer O.M. Hood family here. The land was folded into Fort Hood in 1942, and the site took the name Mayberry Park Cemetery only in the mid-twentieth century.
Why it matters
Forgotten family burial grounds like this one preserve the presence of pioneer settlers whose names would otherwise have vanished entirely from the Texas landscape.
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Related people
- · James Moses Cowan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Brown (Okay Community) Cemetery
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The Okay community grew up around Elisha Ivy's home and store in the 1860s, complete with churches, a school, and a burial ground the Brown family deeded in 1907. But as military installations expanded in the early 1940s, the community was displaced and ceased to exist. In 1953, when the government extended a runway at Gray Air Force Base, the Army Corps of Engineers relocated 70 graves—30 of them unidentified—to this site, carefully realigning the burials as they had originally lain.
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One of the oldest cemeteries in Bell County, this burial ground began in the 1860s serving the rural community of Pleasant Grove. When Frank N. McBryde, Sr. — who donated the land — secured a post office in 1883, the settlement took the name Maxdale. Its earliest documented grave is that of a young woman who died in 1867, and among those laid to rest here are pioneer settlers and veterans reaching from the Civil War through Korea.
Joseph Dennis Lands
Killeen vicinity, TX
Joseph Dennis and his wife Isa left Arkansas for Texas in 1840, and when Bell County was organized a decade later he chaired the committee that chose Nolan Springs—today's Belton—as the county seat. He became the county's first treasurer, ran a grist mill and lumber yard, and assembled tracts of land including this acreage, long known as Elmore Ranch. The property has stayed in his family's hands ever since.
McBryde Cemetery
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