Old Cedar Community
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settled in 1848 by Grayson County pioneers, who reclaimed land from wilderness, raiding Indians and hardships of frontier life soon created need for a cemetery, established the same year. The plots were free to any person. Many noted settlers are buried here, including one Union and 18 Confederate veterans of the Civil War. Of some 400 graves, half are marked. After community was well established, a school-- Cedar Academy -- was organized in 1871. D. H. Dumas gave the land for a 3-acre campus. Enrollment reached 79 in 1872. Here, besides the usual subjects, students learned how to make ink and split goose-quills for pens. Later name was changed to Cedar High School. It merged with the Tom Bean District in 1937. Cedar Methodist Church was organized in 1871. The congregation worshipped in a log house on property deeded by J. G. Vestal and Col. J. R. Cole. A half mile south of Church of Whitemound-Cedar Road, a 7-acre tract donated by Mr. and Mrs. B. M. Carr was used as a camp ground for revivals. Each summer people would come for miles, pitch their tents there, and attend services under a brush arbor. A frame church built in 1891 was destroyed by a tornado in 1960. The present structure was dedicated October, same year.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled in 1848 by Grayson County pioneers who reclaimed land from wilderness amid Indian raids and frontier hardship, Old Cedar quickly needed a cemetery—still holding some 400 graves, including one Union and eighteen Confederate veterans. As the community took root it built Cedar Academy in 1871, where students learned to make ink and split goose-quills alongside their lessons, and organized the Cedar Methodist Church the same year. Camp-ground revivals under brush arbors drew families from miles around each summer.
Why it matters
Old Cedar captures the full arc of a frontier community—cemetery, school, and church—showing how ordinary settlers wove permanence out of raw land in a single generation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1848 Texas had been part of the United States for only a few years, and Grayson County on the Red River was still frontier. Settlers from the older Southern states were moving onto the blackland and timbered creek bottoms of North Texas, clearing fields and building homes by hand.
The work was hard and the region was unsettled. The pioneers at Cedar faced raids, isolation, and the hardships of a place with few roads, doctors, or neighbors. Their cemetery started the same year the community did, a sign of how fast those hardships took lives.
Over the next two decades North Texas went through the Civil War and its aftermath. By the early 1870s communities that had survived those years were building the schools and churches that marked a settlement as permanent.
People & events
The first institution at Cedar was its burial ground, which was open to anyone who needed a plot, free of charge. Around 400 people rest there, and about half of their graves are marked. Among them are one Union veteran and eighteen Confederate veterans, showing that the war's divisions reached even a small North Texas community. They also show that its people ended up sharing the same ground.
1871 was a big year. The community organized Cedar Academy on a three-acre campus given by D. H. Dumas, and by 1872 it had 79 students. Along with the usual lessons, pupils learned to make their own ink and to split goose quills into pens, practical skills in a place where store-bought supplies were hard to get. The school later became Cedar High School and merged into the Tom Bean district in 1937.
Cedar Methodist Church was also organized in 1871. It first worshiped in a log house on land deeded by J. G. Vestal and Col. J. R. Cole. Mr. and Mrs. B. M. Carr donated a seven-acre tract that became a revival camp ground, and every summer families came from miles around to pitch tents and hear preaching under a brush arbor. A frame church built in 1891 stood until a tornado destroyed it in 1960. The congregation dedicated a new building that October.
Its place in the American story
Old Cedar follows a pattern repeated across the American frontier: first a graveyard, then a school, then a church. Each one shows a community deciding to stay. Stories like this, told thousands of times over, are how the West actually got settled.
The camp-meeting revivals held here belong to a long American tradition. Outdoor revivals under brush arbors were a major part of rural religious life, especially among Methodists, and they doubled as social gatherings for scattered farm families.
The veterans buried side by side, Union and Confederate, are a small local picture of a national reckoning. The later merger of Cedar's school into a larger district reflects a twentieth-century trend as well, when rural schools across the country were consolidated.
If you visit
The heart of this place is its cemetery. Walk slowly among the stones and notice how many graves have no marker at all. Those unmarked plots are a quiet reminder of families who couldn't afford a stone, or whose wooden markers have long since rotted away.
Look for the veterans' graves and think about what it meant for one Union soldier to rest among eighteen Confederates in a Texas community. The church's story is here too, from the log house to the frame building lost in 1960 to the church that replaced it that same year.
This is a peaceful stop in the Grayson County countryside near Sherman and Tom Bean. It fits well on a back-roads drive through North Texas. Please treat the grounds with respect, since this is still a place of rest.
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
- · D.H. Dumas
Themes & tags
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