McLarry Cemetery
McKinney, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This site was first used as a cemetery in 1851 when property owner John R. Jones buried his infant son here. The land was later donated as a public burial ground for the pioneer settlers of the surrounding Wilmeth settlement by Mary Virginia Dunn McLarry and her father Robert A. McLarry. The earliest marked graves are those of a brother and sister, Henry E. and Adella M. Hall, who died in 1870. Also buried here is J.B. Wilmeth, for whom the community was named. The site is now used by descendants of the pioneer area families. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground began in 1851 as a private grief, when settler John R. Jones laid his infant son to rest here, and it soon grew into a public cemetery for the pioneer families of the Wilmeth settlement. The McLarry family donated the land, and the community namesake J.B. Wilmeth lies among the graves. Generations of descendants still tend the site, making it a living register of Collin County's earliest settlers.
Why it matters
Pioneer cemeteries like this one preserve the names and kinship networks of the ordinary families who turned frontier land into settled communities across nineteenth-century Texas.
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Related people
- · Mary Virginia Dunn McLarry
- · Robert A. McLarry
- · J.B. Wilmeth
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Wilmeth-McKinney Homestead
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When J.B. and Nancy Wilmeth staked out 320 acres of untouched Collin County prairie in 1846, Texas had been a U.S. state for less than a year and the frontier was still raw. Their two-story home became a hub of pioneer life—a place of worship for the First Christian Church congregation J.B. organized, and a free school he and his children taught for nearly four decades. J.B. helped choose the county seat and served as district clerk and county judge, while marriages knit his family to that of Collin McKinney, the county's namesake and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
McKinney
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McKinney was founded in 1845 and named for Collin McKinney, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence—the same man who gave his name to the surrounding county. During the Civil War, future Texas governor J. W. Throckmorton raised Company K of the 6th Texas Cavalry here, a well-regarded Confederate unit. The town grew into a center of manufacturing, trade, and medicine for the region.
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Organized in 1874 at the home of local physician Dr. E.N. McAuley, this was the first congregation in Collin County tied to the Presbyterian Church in the United States, a Southern denomination born during the Civil War. From eighteen charter members it grew steadily, outgrowing a modest frame chapel and a brick sanctuary before settling into its present home in 1966, still ringing a bell cast for the fellowship in its earliest years.
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