Williams Cemetery
McKinney, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Grafton Williams came to this area in 1843 with the Peters Colony and received a 640-acre land grant. He was active in the creation of Whites Grove Settlement here. After his wife Harriet's death in 1848, he donated land for use as a community cemetery, sometimes called Mount Olive Cemetery because the Mount Olive Baptist Church was once adjacent to it. The Williams Cemetery Association, formed in 1885, maintains the site, using funds from the sale of land willed to the cemetery in 1927 by Samuel Payne. Today the burial ground, still active, is a link to the community's heritage and early residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Grafton Williams arrived in 1843 with the Peters Colony, one of the land-grant settlements that drew Anglo families into north Texas, and received 640 acres. After his wife Harriet died in 1848, he donated land for a community burial ground, sometimes called Mount Olive for the Baptist church that once stood beside it. A cemetery association formed in 1885 still tends the grounds, sustained by land willed to it decades later.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a tangible link to the Peters Colony era, when empresario land grants opened the north Texas prairies to permanent settlement.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Grafton Williams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George McGarrah Cemetery
McKinney, TX
George McGarrah brought his family to this corner of North Texas in the 1840s as a member of the Peters Colony, having already left his mark as a builder in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On his own land he set aside a small family burying ground, becoming its first occupant in 1879. Its ten graves hold three generations of his family—and, in an unmarked plot, a person he had enslaved.
First Christian Church of McKinney
McKinney, TX
On April 1, 1848, about twenty worshippers gathered at the Wilmeth home, then traveled to the new county seat of McKinney determined that its first institution be a church, organizing the First Christian Church on the future courthouse square. They met at first in an unfinished barn and the log courthouse, led by lay preachers who had studied under Alexander Campbell, a founder of the Christian Church. Despite frontier hardship and the upheaval of the Civil War, the fellowship endured, calling its first full-time pastor in 1872 and raising successive church buildings over the following century.
Bradley Cemetery
McKinney, TX
Edward Bradley brought his family from Kentucky in the 1840s as members of the Peters Colony, building a log home on a branch of Wilson's Creek in what is now McKinney. A nearby hillside became the family graveyard and then a community cemetery, holding eleven marked headstones and many unmarked graves — including, in a wooded plot to the south, an enslaved people's cemetery marked with bois d'arc wood. The oldest documented burial is Edward Bradley himself, who died in 1855.
Pecan Grove Memorial Park
McKinney, TX
This ground began as a Republic of Texas land grant in 1845, just four years after Dr. William E. Throckmorton led his family from Tennessee to found the first permanent settlement in the area. By the 1850s it held its first burials, and public ownership followed in 1870; a shady stand of trees gave the place its name. Among those honored is Dr. James Webb Throckmorton—Confederate general, Governor of Texas, and long-serving congressman.