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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1840s, the Republic of Texas was eager to fill its northern frontier with settlers. It turned to the empresario system, granting large colonization contracts to promoters who would bring in families. One of the largest was the Peters Colony, which covered a broad swath of what is now North Texas, including present-day Collin County.
Settlers who came under the Peters Colony terms could claim generous tracts of land for free, an enormous draw for farm families from the Midwest and Upper South. Many came by wagon from states like Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, clearing blackland prairie and building log homes in a country that was still very sparsely settled.
After the Civil War and emancipation, North Texas changed again. Freed people built their own churches, schools, and neighborhoods, often in the face of open hostility and, later, legal segregation. In death as in life, communities were often divided by race, and that division shaped burial grounds across the South for generations.
People & events
Joseph Klepper came to Collin County from Illinois around 1845, part of the wave of families the Peters Colony brought to North Texas. His land grant became the setting for this cemetery, and he played a role in shaping the early community around it.
Klepper also deeded land to the Methodists, and for a number of years the congregation that became the First Methodist Church stood beside the graveyard. In frontier communities, church and cemetery often went together. The same small group of families worshiped side by side, gathered for funerals, and buried their dead in ground set aside close to the meeting house.
The burial ground holds five Peters colonists, along with their families and other early settlers. As the town grew, many prominent Plano citizens, both white and Black, were laid to rest here. Over time, the cemetery's role shifted, and it became the only burial ground for Plano's Black community. Klepper himself died in 1884, long after he had helped set this place in motion.
Its place in the American story
The Peters Colony is a key chapter in how Texas filled out its frontier. Its settlers helped turn North Texas from open prairie into a farming region, and their descendants built the towns that later grew into the suburbs of a major American metropolitan area. A cemetery holding five original colonists is a direct link to that founding generation.
The cemetery's later role tells another part of the American story. Across the country, segregation reached even into graveyards. Black families were often limited to separate or lesser burial grounds, and those places became vital to Black community life, holding the memory of families who were frequently left out of official records.
That a single plot of ground carries both stories, of settlement and of segregation, is what makes it valuable. It reminds you that the history of a place is rarely just one story, and that the people buried side by side were shaped by forces much larger than their town.
If you visit
Plano today is a busy, modern city, which makes a quiet old cemetery all the more striking. Walking among the graves, you step back into the era when this was farm country, settled by families who had traveled hundreds of miles by wagon.
Look for the older stones and think about the names and dates on them. Some will reach back to the earliest years of settlement, while others trace the lives of Black families who kept their community's memory alive here when other cemeteries were closed to them.
Please visit respectfully, as this is a burial ground. It makes a thoughtful stop on a day exploring Plano's older sites and the wider story of North Texas, and a good place to talk with children about how communities remember the people who built them.
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
- · Joseph Klepper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George McGarrah Cemetery
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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.
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