Thompson Public Cemetery
Westworth Village, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1870, Captain Henry J. Thompson, Chief Justice of Jack County, Texas Ranger and Fort Worth Mason, allowed his neighbor and Confederate veteran, William Terry Allen, to bury his first wife, Sarah Anne “Fannie” Grant Allen (1849-1870), on his property. This established Thompson Public Cemetery, one-third mile from the Allen log cabin home. Six months later, their son George E. Allen joined her, followed by another son, Willie Allen, in 1884. William T. Allen later was buried in the cemetery in 1893. His late wife’s younger sister who became his second wife, Theodocia “Docia” Earnest Grant (1854-1931), is buried next to him. A third Grant sister buried in the cemetery, Martha Jane Grant (1842-1885), married Confederate veteran John Jay Ingram. Thompson Public Cemetery has also been known by other names, such as Allen, Farmer, Thompson Community Cemetery, Thompson Neighbors’ Cemetery, and Thompson Cemetery. Many pioneer settler families of White Settlement, River Oaks and Westworth Village are buried in the cemetery, including James Ventioner, founder of River Oaks, and his wife, Millie Farmer. They were the first couple married in White Settlement in 1851. Cleo Akins, a child from a wagon train passing through the area, was laid to rest in an undated grave, with pebbles spelling out her name. Dollie Shrewder Smith, a widow of Civil War and Mexican War Veteran Alexander Purnell Smith, is buried in the cemetery along with her son and father. Also buried in the cemetery are the Farmer brothers, Joseph, Elijah, and David, who were the first to build homes in White Settlement. Today this cemetery is a reminder and a reflection of the lives of pioneer settlers and their descendants. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The cemetery began in 1870 when Captain Henry J. Thompson let his neighbor bury a young wife on his land, near the Allen log cabin. From that first grave it grew into the resting place of the pioneer families who built White Settlement, River Oaks and Westworth Village — among them James Ventioner, founder of River Oaks, and the Farmer brothers, first to raise homes in White Settlement. Confederate veterans, a wagon-train child whose name was spelled in pebbles, and generations of settlers lie together beneath its many names.
Why it matters
This ground gathers the founding families of several Tarrant County communities into one place, a roll call of the pioneers who settled the country west of Fort Worth.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The country west of Fort Worth in the years after the Civil War was still raw frontier. Families pushing out onto the Texas prairie built log cabins, broke the sod, and lived at some distance from one another, bound together less by streets than by kinship, shared labor, and the hard facts of settlement. There were few churches, fewer courthouses, and often no formal cemetery until one was needed.
This was a landscape of small pioneer communities with names that still dot the map — White Settlement, River Oaks, Westworth Village — each begun by a handful of founding families. Many of the men had worn Confederate gray only a few years before; now they turned to the work of settling, farming, and raising the next generation on new ground.
In such a place, a burial ground was one of the first shared institutions a community created. Land had to be given, a first grave dug, and from that single act a piece of private property became a public trust — a place where scattered neighbors would, in time, all come to rest together. The story of this cemetery begins exactly there, in 1870.
People & events
It began as an act of neighborliness. In 1870, Captain Henry J. Thompson — Chief Justice of Jack County, a Texas Ranger, and a Fort Worth Mason — allowed his neighbor, the Confederate veteran William Terry Allen, to bury his young first wife, Sarah Anne 'Fannie' Grant Allen, on his land, about a third of a mile from the Allen log cabin. That first grave established the cemetery.
Grief soon returned to the family. Six months later their son George E. Allen was laid beside his mother, and another son, Willie, followed in 1884. William T. Allen himself was buried here in 1893. The Grant family threads through the whole ground: Fannie's younger sister Theodocia 'Docia' Earnest Grant, who became Allen's second wife, lies next to him, and a third sister, Martha Jane Grant, who married the Confederate veteran John Jay Ingram, rests here as well.
Around this founding family gathered the pioneers of the surrounding communities. Here lies James Ventioner, founder of River Oaks, with his wife Millie Farmer — the first couple married in White Settlement, back in 1851 — and the Farmer brothers, Joseph, Elijah, and David, remembered as the first to build homes in White Settlement. Among the most touching graves is that of Cleo Akins, a child from a passing wagon train, her undated resting place marked by pebbles spelling out her name. Dollie Shrewder Smith, widow of a veteran of both the Civil War and the Mexican War, lies here with her son and father. Over the years the ground has answered to many names — Allen, Farmer, Thompson Community, Thompson Neighbors', and simply Thompson Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
A pioneer cemetery like this one is a founding document written in stone. In a single enclosed acre it gathers the people who created several communities — the first married couple, the first home-builders, the founder of a town — and preserves their names when little else from those early days survives. To walk it is to read a settlement's origin roll.
It also holds the layered American story of its generation. Confederate veterans lie here who lived to become farmers and family men; a widow carries in her husband's memory the Mexican War and the Civil War both; and a nameless-no-longer child from a wagon train reminds us how many families were simply passing through the frontier when tragedy overtook them. The pebble-spelled name is the kind of homemade tenderness that formal monuments rarely match.
Such burial grounds are among the most democratic places in the country. The county judge and the Ranger, the town founder and the migrant child, the pioneer wife and the veteran, all keep the same ground on the same terms. As the suburbs of Fort Worth grew up around it, this cemetery became a quiet anchor to the memory of the people who were here first.
If you visit
Thompson Public Cemetery sits in Westworth Village, just west of Fort Worth, in country that has long since filled in around it. Part of its power is that contrast: a pocket of pioneer memory held within a modern, grown-up landscape. Come in a quiet frame of mind, as you would to any resting place.
What rewards a slow walk here are the names and the connections between them. Look for the founding family and the clustered Grant sisters, for the markers of the men remembered as the first home-builders and town founders, and — if you can find it — the child's grave whose name was set out in pebbles. Reading the stones in the order the marker describes turns a field of headstones into a genealogy of whole communities.
This is a reflective stop rather than a scenic one, well suited to a traveler tracing the roots of the towns west of Fort Worth. Let the many names the cemetery has carried remind you how many families thought of this same ground as theirs. Treat the site gently, and let the inscriptions do the talking.
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
- · Henry J. Thompson
- · William Terry Allen
- · James Ventioner
Themes & tags
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