Plano Cemetery
Plano, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This graveyard was part of the Peters Colony land grant of Joseph Klepper (d. 1884). He immigrated to Collin county from Illinois about 1845. The burial site contains graves of five Peters colonists, their families, and other early settlers. Through the years many prominent Plano citizens both white and black were interred here. Later it served as the only black burial ground for the community. The cemetery has a strong association with the First Methodist Church. It was adjacent to the graveyard for several years on property deeded by Klepper. (1980)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This graveyard lies on a Peters Colony land grant held by Joseph Klepper, an Illinois immigrant who reached Collin County around 1845. It holds the graves of five Peters colonists and their families alongside other early settlers, and over time became the community's only burial ground for its Black residents. The cemetery has long been tied to the First Methodist Church, which once stood on adjacent land Klepper deeded.
Why it matters
The cemetery records both the empresario-era settlement of North Texas and the segregated burial practices that shaped African American community life for generations.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Joseph Klepper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George McGarrah Cemetery
McKinney, TX
George McGarrah brought his family to this corner of North Texas in the 1840s as a member of the Peters Colony, having already left his mark as a builder in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On his own land he set aside a small family burying ground, becoming its first occupant in 1879. Its ten graves hold three generations of his family—and, in an unmarked plot, a person he had enslaved.
Daniel Family Cemetery
University Park, TX
When Frances Sims Daniel brought her family to the young farmlands of Dallas County in 1849, she could not have known that the orchard beside her home would become one of the county's earliest burying grounds. The cemetery began in 1850 with the grave of a man the family called "Old Frank," enslaved by the household for decades, and grew to hold Daniel kin, the people they enslaved, and descendants who served in four American wars. An 1851 headstone for young Isabella Harwood is thought to be among the oldest surviving in the county.
Bradley Cemetery
McKinney, TX
Edward Bradley brought his family from Kentucky in the 1840s as members of the Peters Colony, building a log home on a branch of Wilson's Creek in what is now McKinney. A nearby hillside became the family graveyard and then a community cemetery, holding eleven marked headstones and many unmarked graves — including, in a wooded plot to the south, an enslaved people's cemetery marked with bois d'arc wood. The oldest documented burial is Edward Bradley himself, who died in 1855.
Shiloh Baptist Church
Plano, TX
Organized in 1884 as the Mt. Zion Colored Baptist Church under the Rev. Z.T. Stuart, this congregation was founded by a small group of charter members in the decades after emancipation, when Black communities across Texas built their own churches as centers of faith and self-determination. Its first sanctuary was a modest structure lit by coal-oil lamps and warmed by a wood stove; the present building dates to 1964. Across four buildings on the same site, the church has served its community through worship, education, and outreach.