Civil WarReconstruction & Gilded Age

Shelton's Bear Creek Cemetery

Irving, Dallas County, Texas

Marker Inscription

African Americans came to this area as slaves of white settlers such as William Haley and William Borah before 1845. The land around this site was deeded to early white settler Chilton Smith in 1851. After the Civil War, many former slaves stayed in the area and formed a large African American settlement. In 1879, Minnie Shelton purchased 80 acres including this site for $130, and the Shelton family donated the land for use as a cemetery. The earliest marked burial was that of 23-year-old Smith King in 1895. Other burials of interest include those of Rose Dilworth, whose family owned property in Dallas about 1900, and Elizabeth Lawson, born in the community of Bright Star (later Sulphur Springs), Hopkins County. Her tombstone bears the insignia of the fraternal organization the Independent Order of The Knights and Daughters Of Tabor of America. The land remained in the Shelton family until 1933, when it was deeded to Emily Flippen. The last marked burial took place in 1934. By 1943 the entire Chilton Smith homestead belonged to Emily and W. H. Flippen of Highland Park in Dallas. The property became known as Wild Briar Farm during this time. In 1946 Carr P. Collins and his family purchased the land surrounding the cemetery. Access to the burial ground often has been restricted, and regular maintenance was difficult during the twentieth century. A cemetery survey in the 1970s found that twelve legible headstones remained. It is believed that there are more than 200 burials on this site, a chronicle of the African American history of this area. (2000)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

African Americans first came to this area before 1845 as people enslaved by white settlers, and after the Civil War many freedpeople remained and built a large community here. In 1879 Minnie Shelton bought 80 acres including this site, and the Shelton family set aside land for a cemetery; the earliest marked grave, from 1895, belongs to 23-year-old Smith King. Though later landowners restricted access and only a dozen legible stones survived a 1970s survey, more than 200 people are believed to be buried here.

Why it matters

The cemetery preserves the memory of a freedmen's settlement and the African American history of the area that neglect and restricted access nearly erased.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

This quiet ground near present-day Irving tells one of the oldest and hardest stories in Texas. African Americans were brought to this part of the state before 1845 — before Texas was even a state — as people enslaved by early settlers. They cleared land and worked it, but under bondage, their names largely unrecorded in the deeds and ledgers that history usually keeps.

The land itself passed through the era's familiar hands: deeded to a white settler in 1851, worked through the years of slavery, then thrown into upheaval by the Civil War. When the war ended and emancipation came, the enslaved people of this area faced the enormous question that freedpeople faced everywhere across the defeated South — whether to leave in search of something better, or to stay and build on the only ground they knew.

Many stayed. The marker records that former slaves remained here and "formed a large African American settlement." That single sentence contains the whole promise and peril of Reconstruction: freedom, community, and the daily work of making a life on land where you had once been property.

People & events

The heart of this story is an act of ownership that would have been unthinkable a generation earlier. In 1879, Minnie Shelton purchased 80 acres including this site for $130 — a Black woman buying land in the decades after slavery. The Shelton family then donated part of it for a cemetery, giving the community something a settlement needs as surely as it needs homes: a place to bury and remember its dead.

The earliest marked grave, from 1895, belongs to 23-year-old Smith King — a young life, and the first name the stones preserve. Around him lie others the marker names with care: Rose Dilworth, whose family owned property in Dallas around 1900, and Elizabeth Lawson, born in the community of Bright Star, later Sulphur Springs, in Hopkins County. Lawson's tombstone bears the insignia of the Independent Order of the Knights and Daughters of Tabor of America.

Then the ground slipped away from those who made it. The land left the Shelton family in 1933, and the last marked burial came in 1934. By the 1940s the surrounding homestead had become "Wild Briar Farm" and passed to new owners. Access grew restricted, maintenance faltered, and by a 1970s survey only twelve legible headstones remained — yet more than 200 people are believed to rest here.

Its place in the American story

Freedmen's settlements like this one rose all across the South after 1865, as newly free families pooled what little they had to buy land and anchor a community. They are among the most important and least visible landmarks of African American history, and the fraternal insignia on Elizabeth Lawson's stone points to why they mattered so much.

The Knights and Daughters of Tabor was one of the great Black fraternal orders — mutual-aid societies that, in an age when banks, insurers, and governments offered Black Americans little, provided burial funds, sick benefits, fellowship, and dignity. A Taborian emblem on a grave is a small monument to a vast, self-built network of Black self-reliance.

That this cemetery nearly vanished is itself a national pattern. Countless African American burial grounds were fenced off, plowed under, or simply forgotten as land changed hands through the twentieth century. To place a marker here, and to name Minnie Shelton and Smith King and the others, is to push back against that erasure — to insist that a community which built itself out of bondage will not be lost.

If you visit

Come to this place expecting quiet, and read it slowly. Only about a dozen legible stones survived the twentieth century, yet the marker asks you to hold a far larger number in mind — more than 200 people believed to be buried here. Much of what you're standing among is unmarked, and that absence is part of the story.

Look for the name Smith King, the young man whose 1895 stone is the earliest the cemetery kept. If you can find Elizabeth Lawson's marker, look for the fraternal insignia carved into it — a small symbol that opens onto the whole world of Black mutual-aid societies.

This is not a grand monument but a survivor, and it rewards a respectful, reflective visit rather than a quick photo. Tread gently, leave the stones as you found them, and let the place do what a cemetery is meant to do: return names and lives to memory. It's a stop that will stay with you longer than many a larger landmark.

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

· Minnie Shelton
· Smith King

Themes & tags

African American HistoryMemorial

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