Old Kit Cemetery
Irving, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settlers came to this area near the Elm and west forks of the Trinity River in the mid-1800s. Isaac Henry “Ike” Story built a grocery store in what became the community of Gorbit (also known by similar spellings). Ike Story was the postmaster for “Gorbet” from 1888 until 1894, when the name was changed to Kit; Ike remained postmaster. In 1904, the Kit post office closed and moved to Irving. Ike Story is among the pioneers buried at Old Kit Cemetery. This community burial ground began in 1896, when a family passing through stopped to care for their sick child. When the child died, they asked landowner David Chadwell Britain if they could bury their child in the grove of trees where they had camped. Britain donated land for a community cemetery. The child’s gravesite and the name of the family are now unknown. Britain also deeded one acre adjoining the cemetery to New Providence Baptist Church, stipulating that the land was to be used continuously for church purposes. Several congregations have occupied the site. Early in the cemetery’s development, members of Kit and surrounding communities chose their own plots, stepping off plots rather than making precise measurements. Many early settlers are interred here, including Aunt Kit King, attributed by some sources to be the namesake for the Kit community. Many veterans with service dating from the Civil War to present are buried here, as well as early French, German and Belgian settlers. Old Kit Cemetery, Inc., formed in 1947 and incorporated in 1949, continues to care for the cemetery. Burials are now restricted to direct descendants of early settlers. The cemetery continues as a final resting place and a chronicle of a rural community now incorporated into Irving.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Near the forks of the Trinity River, mid-1800s settlers built the little community of Gorbit, later renamed Kit, complete with a store, a post office, and the merchant-postmaster Ike Story. The cemetery began in 1896 when a family passing through buried their sick child in a grove on David Britain's land, and Britain donated the ground for a community burial place and an adjoining church lot. Early settlers stepped off their own plots by eye, and today Civil War–era veterans, immigrant French, German, and Belgian families, and pioneers like Aunt Kit King rest here as Irving has grown up around them.
Why it matters
Old Kit Cemetery preserves the memory of a vanished rural crossroads community, a reminder of how many small frontier settlements were absorbed by the spreading cities of modern Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Old Kit Cemetery grows out of the mid-1800s settlement of North Texas, in the years spanning the Early Republic and the Reconstruction and Gilded Age eras. Families came to the land near the Elm and west forks of the Trinity River when this was still open country, part of the broad westward push of settlers seeking farmland and a fresh start on the American frontier.
In that era, a community often began with the simplest of institutions: a store, a church, a post office, and a burial ground. The little settlement here — spelled variously as Gorbit or Gorbet before it became Kit — was exactly this kind of place, a rural crossroads knit together by neighbors who depended on one another.
The cemetery's own timeline, stretching from the 1890s into the twentieth century, tracks the slow transformation of the Texas countryside. What began as scattered farms would, over generations, be swallowed by the growing city of Irving — a quiet reminder of how many small communities the modern metropolis was built upon.
People & events
At the heart of the story is Isaac Henry "Ike" Story, who built a grocery store and became the local postmaster. He held that post as the community's name shifted from Gorbet to Kit in 1894, and he stayed on until the post office closed and moved to Irving in 1904. Ike is among the pioneers buried in the cemetery he helped anchor as a community.
The cemetery itself began with a moment of shared human tenderness. In 1896, a family passing through stopped to care for their sick child. When the child died, they asked the landowner, David Chadwell Britain, if they might bury the little one in the grove of trees where they had camped. Britain donated the land for a community cemetery — and, poignantly, the child's name and the family's name are now lost to time. Britain also deeded an adjoining acre to New Providence Baptist Church, with the condition that it be used continuously for church purposes.
The people here reflect the texture of frontier life. Early settlers stepped off their own plots by eye rather than by precise survey. Among the interred is Aunt Kit King, whom some sources credit as the namesake of the community. Veterans from the Civil War onward rest here, alongside early French, German, and Belgian settlers — the immigrant families who helped build rural Texas.
Its place in the American story
Old Kit Cemetery is a small but eloquent chapter in the great American story of westward expansion and the frontier. It preserves the memory of one of countless little settlements that sprang up across the country in the 1800s — places with a store, a post office, and a name, most of which never grew into towns and many of which have vanished entirely.
The cemetery's origin captures something essential about how frontier communities formed: not by grand design, but through acts of neighborliness. A grieving family, a landowner's gift, a church lot deeded with care — these small human decisions created lasting institutions. That plots were stepped off by eye rather than surveyed tells you everything about the informal, trusting way rural communities organized themselves.
The presence of Civil War–era veterans and European immigrant families also reflects national currents in miniature: the reach of that war into every corner of the country, and the streams of newcomers from France, Germany, and Belgium who settled the American heartland. When a place like this is absorbed by a spreading city, the cemetery becomes the last chronicle of the community that came first.
If you visit
A visit to Old Kit Cemetery is a quiet act of remembering. Set within the modern city of Irving, it holds the memory of a rural crossroads that time and growth have otherwise erased. Come in a reflective frame of mind; this is a place that rewards slow reading of the stones rather than a quick look.
Walk the fenced ground and notice how the older plots sit in the informal pattern of settlers who stepped off their own graves. Look for the range of surnames — the French, German, and Belgian families among the early settlers — and the markers of veterans whose service stretches from the Civil War onward. Somewhere here, unmarked and unnamed, lies the child whose burial began it all.
For a road trip, it makes a moving contrast: a pocket of frontier stillness inside a busy Dallas-area suburb. It's the kind of stop that reframes the landscape around you, reminding you that beneath the highways and subdivisions lies the older map of a farming community that once gathered at a store and a post office called Kit.
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
- · Isaac Henry Story
- · David Chadwell Britain
Themes & tags
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Kit Community
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John W. and Jestine Gorbit farmed here by 1850, and a settlement called Gorbit grew up around them as a stop on a pre–Civil War postal route. After Ike Story opened a store and post office in 1889, confusion with a similarly named town led to the settlement being renamed Kit in 1894, and residents added a cemetery and schools. When the railroad town of Irving was founded nearby in 1903, Kit's businesses, churches, and post office drifted to the new townsite, and by the 1940s the community had faded into the growing metropolis.
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