Saginaw Cemetery
Saginaw, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the 1890s, John Allebaugh Bowman led 19 people to Tarrant County on a three-week journey from Missouri. John and his brother, Frederick Kline Bowman, owned adjoining properties midway between Haslet and Saginaw. John founded Saginaw Cemetery Association to meet the needs of nearby residents. In 1899, the Association incorporated under the laws of the State of Texas with trustees R.A. Barrow, S.A. Shelton, J.A. Bowman, Anderson Hunter, and H.L. Pierce. John Allebaugh Bowman's son, John David, was the first person buried here on February 19, 1899. In the next six months, John A., his wife Susanna, and their other son, Roscoe, all died and were interred here, leaving nine young orphans in the Bowman family. At this time family plots were sold for $5.00 each, and spaces for $2.00. In 1900, W.L. Tate signed the deed to Saginaw Cemetery to H.L. Pierce for $50.00. The property was 300 by 200 feet measured from the southwest corner of the church and school lot. In March 1901, the first fence was erected around the cemetery. In July 1902, lots #132, 133, 150 and 151 were set aside for use as a potters field. A Mr. Worthington became the first paid caretaker in July 1903, receiving $2.00 each time he cleaned and cared for the entire graveyard. Around 1910, the cemetery expanded to the west to its current boundaries. The two sections can be distinguished by different grid systems. Most gravestones are limestone, granite, and concrete, and some family plots have concrete curbing. Military veterans from World War I to present are interred here. Most of the earliest records were destroyed in a 1925 fire. Saginaw Cemetery remains a chronicle of the history of the community and its people. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2012
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the 1890s John Allebaugh Bowman led nineteen people on a three-week journey from Missouri to Tarrant County, where he founded the Saginaw Cemetery Association to serve nearby residents. His son John David was the first buried here in February 1899—soon followed by tragedy, as John A., his wife, and another son all died within months, leaving nine orphaned children. Incorporated in 1899, expanded around 1910, and holding veterans from World War I onward, the cemetery remains a chronicle of the community despite the loss of early records in a 1925 fire.
Why it matters
Saginaw Cemetery records the migration and hard losses of the families who settled North Texas, preserving the human story of a community in the graves of its founders.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Allebaugh Bowman
- · Frederick Kline Bowman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Quanah Parker
Fort Worth, TX
Born around 1845, Quanah Parker was the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo girl taken captive as a child and raised among the Qua-Ha-Di band. Refusing the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty, Quanah led raids across Texas and Mexico for years and eluded Col. Ranald MacKenzie's cavalry until losses at Adobe Walls and a brutal winter brought his people to the Fort Sill reservation in 1875. There he reinvented himself as a pragmatic leader and liaison, promoting ranching and schooling, prospering in business, and traveling widely—visiting Fort Worth and the Stockyards many times before his death in 1911.
Domino Building
Fort Worth, TX
In the late 1880s this Fort Worth address housed Buck's Domino Parlor, a gaming house so notorious it was dubbed "the Casino of the Wild West," where high-stakes fortunes changed hands overnight. The area drew figures of Old West legend — outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid among them, alongside Luke Short, the gambler-gunman known for running honest high-stakes play. This was the raucous, cattle-town frontier of Fort Worth's famed "Hell's Half Acre."
First United Methodist Church
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Methodism began in 1853 with a circuit-riding preacher on horseback carrying the gospel to homes across Tarrant County. As membership swelled, the congregation built and outgrew a succession of churches, and on the very day of the 1929 stock-market crash it broke ground on a soaring Gothic Revival edifice inspired by Notre-Dame in Paris. Members literally locked the old doors and walked together to the new sanctuary in 1930, where a long tradition of homeless outreach and broadcast ministry later took root.
Archibald Franklin Leonard
Haltom City, TX
Born in Pennsylvania and married in Missouri, Archibald Franklin Leonard joined a wave of neighbors migrating to Texas in 1845 and took up land in the Peters Colony near present-day Grapevine. A church leader and enterprising merchant, he opened—with Henry Clay Daggett—the first civilian store in Fort Worth, served as Tarrant County's first county clerk, and sat in the Twelfth Texas Legislature. He helped lay out Grapevine, ran a mercantile there, and in 1856 established Leonard's Mill on the Trinity River, around which the community later known as Randol Mill grew.