Smithfield Cemetery
North Richland Hills, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Eli Smith (1848-79), for whose family the town of Smithfield is named, came from Missouri to Texas about 1859. In the early 1870s he donated part of his farm for the cemetery. The oldest marked grave is that of an infant, Mattie J. Brownfield, who died on Oct. 13, 1872. More than seventy-five graves, including that of Eli Smith, date from the 1870s. Pioneer physician Lilburn Howard Colley (b. 1843), for whom nearby Colleyville is named, was interred here in 1924. Numerous Civil War veterans, including men from both the Union and Confederate Armies, are also buried here.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery began in the early 1870s when Eli Smith — the namesake of Smithfield, who came from Missouri to Texas around 1859 — gave part of his farm for a burying ground. Its oldest marked grave, an infant's, dates to 1872, and more than seventy-five graves come from that first decade, including Smith's own. Among those laid to rest here are pioneer physician Lilburn Howard Colley, for whom Colleyville is named, and Civil War veterans from both Union and Confederate armies.
Why it matters
Its side-by-side Union and Confederate graves testify to how Texas frontier communities were settled by Americans who had fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before the Civil War, families from Missouri and other Southern and border states were moving into North Texas, drawn by open prairie and good farmland. Eli Smith's family arrived around 1859 and settled in what is now Tarrant County. At that time it was a thinly settled stretch of country.
The Civil War split communities like this one. Texas joined the Confederacy, but the men who later settled in North Texas came from everywhere, including states that sent soldiers to the Union. After the war, settlers kept pouring into the region, and veterans who had fought on opposite sides ended up farming next to each other.
The 1870s, when this cemetery was founded, were a time of rebuilding and growth. Small farm communities organized churches, schools and burying grounds. A cemetery was often among the first shared institutions a rural settlement created.
People & events
Eli Smith came to Texas as a boy, around eleven years old by the dates on the marker, and the community of Smithfield took his family's name. In the early 1870s he gave part of his own farm for a cemetery. Generosity like that gave many rural Texas communities their burying grounds.
The oldest marked grave tells a quiet, painful story. It belongs to an infant, Mattie J. Brownfield, who died in October 1872. In frontier communities, the death of babies and young children was heartbreakingly common, and the first graves in many cemeteries belong to the very young. Eli Smith himself was buried here after he died in 1879 at only about thirty-one. He is one of more than seventy-five people buried here in the 1870s alone, which says a lot about how hard life was for these early settlers.
Later came Lilburn Howard Colley, a pioneer physician, born in 1843 and buried here in 1924. Nearby Colleyville carries his name. Around these founders lie numerous Civil War veterans, Union and Confederate alike, buried in the same ground they once might have fought over.
Its place in the American story
Smithfield Cemetery offers a small window onto one of the big themes of American history after the Civil War: how a divided nation got back to ordinary life. Here, men who had worn blue and men who had worn gray became neighbors, and in the end were buried side by side.
It also reflects the great westward movement of American families into Texas in the mid-1800s. Settlers from Missouri and elsewhere carried their farming traditions, their faith and their family ties into new country, and named their communities after the people who founded them.
Today the Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the largest metropolitan regions in the nation, and quiet places like this hold its earliest memories. The names of Smith and Colley live on in Smithfield and Colleyville. The cemetery is where those namesakes actually rest.
If you visit
Walk slowly and read the stones. Look for the oldest ones from the 1870s. Their weathered carving and simple styles are very different from later markers. You may notice how many belong to children, which is a sobering reminder of frontier life.
Keep an eye out for veterans' markers. Civil War soldiers' graves sometimes carry military-style stones or symbols, and finding both Union and Confederate veterans in one rural cemetery is a powerful thing to see in person.
This is a resting place, so visit quietly and respectfully, and stay on paths where you can. It makes a meaningful short stop if you are exploring the history of the communities between Fort Worth and Dallas, and pairs naturally with a visit to nearby Colleyville, named for the doctor buried here.
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
- · Eli Smith
- · Lilburn Howard Colley
- · Mattie J. Brownfield
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alfred Madison Hightower
N.Richland Hills, TX
Alfred M. Hightower arrived near Smithfield from Illinois in 1858 to ranch, and though he opposed secession, he cast his lot with the South once war broke out. As a Confederate mounted rifleman he fought at Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge) in Arkansas, one of the largest battles west of the Mississippi. He tried Kansas in the 1870s before returning to ranch here until his death, leaving his name on a nearby street.
Dr. Lilburn Howard Colley
Colleyville, TX
Dr. L. H. Colley, a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, migrated with his wife from Missouri to Texas in 1880 and settled in the Bransford community in 1885, where he became a respected physician and school-district election official. When a grocery store opened near his home in 1914, Colley suggested naming the growing area Colleyville. The community he named eventually absorbed several neighboring settlements.
William Letchworth Hurst
Hurst, TX
Tennessee-born William "Uncle Billy" Hurst fought for the Confederacy in the 61st Tennessee Infantry, surrendered near Vicksburg to Grant in 1863, and spent the war's final stretch in Northern prison camps after his capture in Tennessee. In 1870 he joined a migration of Claiborne County families to Texas, where he prospered as a land speculator. When he granted a right-of-way to the Rock Island line in 1903, the railroad named its stop for him—and the town of Hurst grew up around it.
I. D. Parker Public Cemetery and Homestead
Hurst, TX
Isaac Duke Parker, son of the noted early Texas politician Isaac Parker, settled near this site with his family in 1853. He served as a Tarrant County commissioner before enlisting in the Confederate army during the Civil War, then took over the family homestead and cemetery around 1867. Near the end of his life he set aside the eastern half of the burial ground — with more than thirty graves — as a public cemetery.