McCombs Cemetery
Flower Mound, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The history of this small community cemetery dates to the 1850s, before Denton was selected as county seat. The site contains graves of early pioneers of the Lewisville-Flower Mound area. Settlers included Nehemiah Wade Boyd (1823-1856), his wife Susan McCombs Boyd (1824-1917), their six children, family matriarch Mary Nowlin McCombs (1803-1867), and members of Nowlin, Sigler and Rivers families who arrived in 1855 from Tennessee. Nehemiah Boyd died suddenly of pneumonia after being chilled by a blue norther while building a log cabin for his family, and was buried on land donated by his brother-in-law, John Mathis McCombs. Susan Boyd later gave birth to their seventh child and first Texan, George Taylor Boyd (1856-1933). Although Nehemiah Boyd's burial was long believed to be the first, archeological evidence suggests as many as 100 individuals may have been buried here and that the site was a community cemetery in use between the 1850s and 1890s. Typically graves were marked with native sandstone or brick. Boyd descendants formed the McCombs Cemetery Association in 1990 to protect the burial site from encroaching development. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This small community burial ground dates to the 1850s, before Denton was even chosen as county seat. Here lie pioneers who came from Tennessee in 1855—the Boyd, McCombs, Nowlin, Sigler, and Rivers families—including Nehemiah Boyd, who died of pneumonia after being caught by a blue norther while raising a log cabin for his family. Archaeological evidence suggests as many as 100 people were buried here between the 1850s and 1890s, their graves once marked by native sandstone.
Why it matters
McCombs Cemetery preserves the memory of the ordinary settler families who broke the North Texas prairie, and stands as a small stronghold of history against encroaching suburban development.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The graves in this small cemetery reach back to the 1850s — a time when this stretch of North Texas was still raw frontier and the county's shape was only just being drawn. The site was already in use before Denton was selected as the county seat, which tells you how early these families arrived: they were here before the institutions of the county had settled into place around them.
The 1850s in North Texas drew a steady stream of settlers pushing west, many of them from the older states of the American South. They came to break the prairie, raise cabins, and plant the first farms in country that had very recently been open land. Life was close to the bone. A family's survival depended on getting shelter up before the weather turned, and on the strength of the kin who came with them.
This was a community cemetery from the start — not a single family plot but a shared burying ground for the scattered pioneers of what became the Lewisville–Flower Mound area. In a place with few churches and fewer public institutions, a cemetery was one of the first pieces of permanent community a settlement made together.
People & events
In 1855 several linked families arrived here together from Tennessee — the Boyds, McCombses, Nowlins, Siglers, and Riverses. Among them was Nehemiah Wade Boyd, born in 1823, his wife Susan McCombs Boyd, born in 1824, and their six children, along with the family matriarch, Mary Nowlin McCombs, born in 1803. They were a web of related households moving west together, the way frontier families so often did, pooling their courage for the journey.
Nehemiah Boyd's story is the one the marker holds most closely, and it is a hard one. While building a log cabin for his family, he was chilled by a "blue norther" — one of those sudden North Texas cold fronts that can drop the temperature dozens of degrees in an afternoon — and died suddenly of pneumonia in 1856, only thirty-three years old. He was buried on land donated by his brother-in-law, John Mathis McCombs. For years his was believed to be the first grave here.
There is a note of continuity amid the loss. After Nehemiah's death, Susan Boyd gave birth to their seventh child — George Taylor Boyd, born in 1856, the first of the family to be born in Texas. Susan herself lived until 1917, a long widowhood spanning the transformation of the frontier she had helped settle. And the family's care did not end in the nineteenth century: Boyd descendants formed the McCombs Cemetery Association in 1990 to protect the burial ground from encroaching development.
Its place in the American story
McCombs Cemetery is a monument to the ordinary settlers who are the real engine of the American westward story — not famous names, but families who loaded their lives onto wagons and moved from the older states to break new ground. The migration from Tennessee to Texas in the 1850s was part of a vast national movement, and this cemetery preserves the human cost and continuity of it in one small plot of earth.
The archaeology deepens the meaning. Though Nehemiah Boyd's grave was long thought to be the first, evidence now suggests as many as 100 people may be buried here, and that the site served as a community cemetery from the 1850s into the 1890s. Most graves were marked simply, with native sandstone or brick — the plain memorials of people who had little to spare for stone-cutting. Those humble markers are themselves a record of frontier life: dignified, unadorned, made from what the land offered.
And Nehemiah's death by a blue norther is a distinctly regional reminder that the American frontier was shaped by its weather as much as by its politics. A single cold front could end a young father's life mid-task. The families who stayed, buried their dead, and kept building anyway are the reason the prairie became farms and towns.
If you visit
Come to this place expecting quiet. It is a small community cemetery in Flower Mound, and its power is in its modesty — the resting place of pioneer families rather than a monument to any one great figure. Look for the native sandstone that typically marked graves here; those rough, simple stones are as much a part of the history as any inscription, the handiwork of a frontier community burying its own.
As you read the names — Boyd, McCombs, Nowlin, Sigler, Rivers — remember that they arrived together from Tennessee in 1855, a whole network of kin. You are looking at the memory of a single migration, and at generations that followed, including George Taylor Boyd, the family's first child born in Texas after his father's death.
Notice, too, where you are standing: in a region that has grown into busy suburbs. The McCombs Cemetery Association was formed in 1990 precisely to guard this ground against encroaching development, so the cemetery survives as a small island of the 1850s inside the modern landscape. That contrast is the whole experience — a pocket of frontier history held deliberately intact. Visit with the respect owed a working burial ground, and let it slow you down.
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
- · Nehemiah Wade Boyd
- · Susan McCombs Boyd
- · Mary Nowlin McCombs
- · John Mathis McCombs
Themes & tags
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