Site of Berachah Home and Cemetery
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Berachah Rescue Society was organized at Waco in 1894 by the Rev. J. T. Upchurch (b. 1870) for the protection of homeless girls and unwed mothers. Nine years later he opened the Berachah Industrial Home at this site. Ten buildings were located here, including a print shop for publication of the "Purity Journal". The cemetery, which contains more than eighty graves, was first used in 1904 for the burial of Eunice Williams, one of the residents. The home closed in 1935, but the site was used until 1942 as an orphanage run by Upchurch's daughter Allie Mae and her husband Frank Wiese. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded at Waco in 1894 by the Rev. J. T. Upchurch, the Berachah Rescue Society aimed to shelter homeless girls and unwed mothers at a time when such women faced harsh social judgment. Nine years later Upchurch opened the Berachah Industrial Home on this site, a ten-building campus that included a print shop for the 'Purity Journal.' Its cemetery holds more than eighty graves — the first, in 1904, that of a resident named Eunice Williams — and after the home closed in 1935 the site served as an orphanage until 1942.
Why it matters
The home reflects an era of faith-driven social reform and the vulnerable women it sought to protect, whose lives and losses are recorded in its quiet cemetery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the end of the nineteenth century, a young woman who was homeless, pregnant and unmarried faced a hard world. Social judgment was severe. Families sometimes turned daughters away, and there were few places a woman in crisis could go for shelter, work or medical care.
In that setting, religious reformers across America began opening "rescue homes." Their purpose was to take in vulnerable women and girls, give them a place to live, and help them build a new life. The movement mixed real compassion with the strict moral language of the time. Both sides are part of its history.
Texas was part of the movement. In 1894 a Berachah Rescue Society was organized in Waco. About a decade later its work moved here, to what was then a modest community between Dallas and Fort Worth. It became a substantial institution.
People & events
The central figure is the Rev. J. T. Upchurch, born in 1870. He was still a young man when he organized the Berachah Rescue Society at Waco in 1894 to protect homeless girls and unwed mothers. Nine years later he opened the Berachah Industrial Home on this site. The word "industrial" was common for such institutions and generally signaled that residents would learn work and skills there.
The home grew into a campus of ten buildings. One of them was a print shop that produced the "Purity Journal," the home's publication. It was a reminder that reform movements of the era spread their message through the printed word as well as through charity.
The most moving part of the site is its cemetery. It was first used in 1904 for the burial of Eunice Williams, one of the residents. In time it held more than eighty graves. Each one is a life tied to this place, and many of those lives went otherwise unrecorded.
The home closed in 1935, but the site's work with vulnerable young people continued. Until 1942 it operated as an orphanage run by Upchurch's daughter, Allie Mae, and her husband, Frank Wiese. The family's commitment spanned two generations.
Its place in the American story
The Berachah Home belongs to a broad American movement of faith-driven social reform in the decades around 1900. Church people and reformers across the country, many of them women, opened shelters, maternity homes and rescue missions for people that respectable society often refused to help.
These institutions are complicated history. They offered real refuge, food, shelter and a chance at a new start. They also reflected the moral judgments of their time, and residents had little say in how their stories were told. Remembering places like Berachah honestly means holding both of those truths.
Most of all, the site reminds us how much of women's history is quiet and close to home. The women who lived here rarely appear in textbooks. A marker and a cemetery with more than eighty graves are among the few public records that they were here at all.
If you visit
This is a place for reflection, not sightseeing. The buildings of the Berachah Home are gone, but the cemetery remains as the most direct connection to the women and children who lived here. Visit respectfully and quietly, as you would any burial ground.
Today the site is surrounded by modern Arlington, which grew up around it long after the home closed. That contrast is part of the experience: a quiet patch of history inside a busy city. Take a moment to think about Eunice Williams, the first person buried here, and the dozens who followed her.
Arlington sits between Dallas and Fort Worth and is often visited for its big attractions. A stop here adds a quieter, deeper layer to that trip. It pairs well with other Women's History sites in North Texas for anyone tracing how ordinary women's lives shaped the region.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. T. Upchurch
- · Eunice Williams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wilson Cemetery
Grand Prairie, TX
This small cemetery began in 1872 when Charles N. Wilson buried his wife, Ophelia, and their newborn daughter here after both died from complications of childbirth. A third grave, that of the Bowlin infant, is unmarked—laid to rest by parents who had no public graveyard nearby. With only three burials, the Wilson Cemetery is a spare but poignant record of everyday life and loss in nineteenth-century Tarrant County.
Administration Building
Fort Worth, TX
This Texas limestone hall was raised in 1902 for Polytechnic College, a coeducational Methodist school organized in 1890 on land donated by local benefactors. It served through the institution's years as Texas Woman's College from 1914 to 1934 and continued in use after the school became Texas Wesleyan College, receiving a modernization in 1963. The building remains a link to more than a century of Methodist higher education in Fort Worth.
Joffre-Gilbert House
Irving, TX
A. Fred Joffre, one of early Irving's best-known builders, put up this airplane bungalow in the original townsite in 1919, its distinctive stacked porch posts marking the era's craftsman style. In 1939 the home was bought by pioneer physician Franklin Monroe Gilbert and his wife Dorothy, a nurse, who for nearly thirty years received patients here day and night for examinations, medication, and emergencies—even delivering at least one baby under its roof. A Perma Stone facing added in the late 1940s preserved the bungalow's defining character.
Saint Joseph Hospital
Fort Worth, TX
In booming 1880s railroad-town Fort Worth, the Missouri Pacific opened an infirmary for its workers, and in 1885 handed it over to the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word—ten nuns who came up from San Antonio to run it. When the railroad's work wound down in 1889, the sisters bought the facility outright and made it St. Joseph's, the city's first general hospital, caring for charity patients from the start. A three-story brick building followed in 1898, and over the next century the institution grew to add professional training, counseling, and the county's first hospice.