Prairie Grove Cemetery
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This site recalls a historic African American church, school and cemetery in Alief. Only a few African Americans lived in the area in the nineteenth century, working as farm laborers or tenant farmers. More families came in the early twentieth century, including the David and Parthenia Outley family from Fort Bend by 1910. S.B. (Shorter) Burleson, Eddie and Will Garmond, and others arrived soon after. Oral tradition tells that Prairie Grove Missionary Baptist Church first met in the Burleson home; Mamie Burleson was instrumental in naming the church. In October 1910, L.P. Scarborough sold this land to church trustees S.B. Burleson and Will and Eddie Garmond, in 1921-22, the congregation built a white frame sanctuary that also served as a schoolhouse from 1927 to 1937. The congregation dwindled in the 1940s, and the building was later razed. Early black families used other area cemeteries before establishing this burial ground adjacent to the church. About fifty known graves have been surveyed on the 1.35 acre property, along with several unmarked graves. The earliest known burials are those of Melissa Outley (1940), Leo Bryant, Jr. (1941), Lillian Garmond Jackson (1942) and Lucy Truitt (1943). Unmarked graves, however, may predate these. Pioneer families, Freemasons and military veterans from World War II and the Vietnam Conflict are buried here. Descendants of church founders formed Prairie Grove Cemetery Association in 1967 to maintain and preserve the burial ground. The once rural cemetery is still in use by descendants of early families and others. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Prairie Grove recalls an African American church, school, and cemetery in Alief, where a handful of Black farm laborers and tenant farmers lived in the 1800s before more families — the Outleys, Burlesons, and Garmonds among them — arrived in the early 1900s. Prairie Grove Missionary Baptist Church, said to have first met in the Burleson home, bought this land in 1910 and raised a frame sanctuary that doubled as a schoolhouse from 1927 to 1937. The adjoining burial ground holds roughly fifty known graves, plus unmarked ones, and includes pioneer families, Freemasons, and veterans of World War II and Vietnam.
Why it matters
Prairie Grove preserves the church-school-cemetery triad at the heart of rural Black community life, a landscape now nearly erased by Houston's suburban sprawl.
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Related people
- · David Outley
- · Parthenia Outley
- · S.B. Burleson
Themes & tags
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