Spring Creek Cemetery
Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The earliest burial on this site is that of infant Mary C. Underwood, who died in 1875. Another infant, identified only as "Newton's child," was interred on what became known as "Stranger's Row" in 1882. The following year, John P. and Sarah Jane (Ball) Barnhart donated this land to the newly formed Spring Creek Cemetery Association. Among the pioneers and their descendants interred here is Maleta Stapp Kleiser (1816-1902), whose father served in the Revolutionary War. Travis Anderson (1891-1918) died while in training during World War I, and Roy Speake, Jr. (1918-1944) died in the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. The Spring Creek Cemetery Foundation was organized in 1972 to maintain the historic graveyard. Spring Creek Cemetery is a chronicle of Cooke County. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On the North Texas prairie of Cooke County, this graveyard opened in 1875 with the burial of the infant Mary C. Underwood, and in 1883 the Barnharts donated the land to a newly formed cemetery association. Its stones read like a roll call of American service across generations—a pioneer whose father fought in the Revolution, a young man lost in World War I training, and Roy Speake, Jr., killed in the 1944 invasion of Normandy. For more than a century, local families and a 1972 foundation have tended the rows.
Why it matters
A country cemetery like this preserves, grave by grave, the ordinary families whose labor and sacrifice built the frontier and answered the nation's wars.
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Related people
- · Maleta Stapp Kleiser
- · Roy Speake, Jr.
- · Travis Anderson
Themes & tags
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