Van Alstyne Cemetery
Van Alstyne, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established 1846 Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1846, in the first year of Texas statehood, this burial ground has served the Van Alstyne area of Grayson County for well over a century and a half. Its designation as a Historic Texas Cemetery recognizes a resting place that predates the town around it and traces back to the earliest settlement of the North Texas prairie.
Why it matters
A cemetery begun the year Texas joined the Union marks how quickly Anglo-American settlement took root across the blackland prairie, leaving graves as its earliest permanent record.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fifrty Feet North to Grave of Collin McKinney
Van Alstyne, TX
Born in New Jersey in 1766 to Scottish immigrant parents, Collin McKinney migrated to Kentucky and then, in 1824, across the Red River into Texas. In 1836 he was elected a delegate to the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, where he served on the committee that drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence and signed the document at age 69. He later sat in several congresses of the Republic and helped found the first Disciples of Christ congregation in Texas.
First United Methodist Church of Van Alstyne
Van Alstyne, TX
This congregation grew from an 1847 Bible-study class held in a settler's log cabin, gathering strength through a legendary three-week revival in 1855 before moving with the railroad to the new town of Van Alstyne in 1873. It hosted the first district Epworth League of the Southern Methodist Church in 1894 and, in 1912, an address by former president Theodore Roosevelt; one of Texas' earliest Boy Scout troops formed here in 1917, the same year the present sanctuary was dedicated. The modern name followed the national Methodist union of 1968.
First Christian Church
Van Alstyne, TX
This congregation descends from the first Disciples of Christ church in Texas, gathered in the winter of 1841–42 near the Arkansas border under Collin McKinney, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The group migrated west to the settlement of Mantua, where an 1854 meetinghouse divided men from women by a center aisle and members bound their own hymnals. When the railroad created Van Alstyne, the church moved here, merging the old and new congregations by 1891.
Van Alstyne
Van Alstyne, TX
The town of Mantua flourished a few miles southwest until 1873, when the Houston and Texas Central Railway routed its tracks through this area instead, and a depot and post office sprang up in a new town named for Maria Van Alstyne, widow of an H&TC stockholder. Churches, businesses, and whole families picked up and moved to be near the rails. By 1900 Van Alstyne boasted banks, schools, an opera house, and even a home-grown semi-pro baseball team, the "Grays," that sent players to the major leagues.