Wylie Cemetery
Wylie, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
IN 1889, THE WYLIE CEMETERY COMPANY PURCHASED SEVERAL TOWN LOTS, TOTALING ABOUT FIVE ACRES, FROM THE GULF, COLORADO & SANTA FE RAILROAD AND ESTABLISHED THE WYLIE CEMETERY. ACCORDING TO LOCAL HISTORY, THE DAUGHTER OF AN INDIGENT FAMILY WAS THE FIRST BURIAL BEFORE THE CEMETERY WAS COMPLETED. THE EARLIEST MARKED GRAVE IS THAT OF WYLIE CEMETERY COMPANY PRESIDENT, WILLIAM M. HOUSEWRIGHT, WHO DIED IN 1889 FROM PNEUMONIA. OTHER WYLIE CEMETERY COMPANY FOUNDERS ARE BURIED HERE INCLUDING DR. JOHN F. BUTLER, FRANK L. McCARTY AND WILLIAM THOMAS BROWN, AS WELL AS VETERANS FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE VIETNAM WAR. THE WYLIE CEMETERY ASSOCIATION MAINTAINS THIS HISTORIC CEMETERY. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1889 the Wylie Cemetery Company bought about five acres of town lots from the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad and opened this burial ground. Its first grave, by local tradition, held the daughter of an indigent family, while the earliest marked stone belongs to company president William M. Housewright, dead of pneumonia that same year. Alongside the founders lie veterans of every American conflict from the Civil War to Vietnam.
Why it matters
It is a community's memory in stone, tracing a small Texas town's families and its citizen-soldiers across more than a century of service.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William M. Housewright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rockwall County Veterans Memorial
Rockwall, TX
In the small North Texas county of Rockwall, citizens raised this memorial to honor everyone from the community who served in the nation's armed forces, and above all those who never came home. Its language — echoing Lincoln's phrase 'the last full measure of devotion' — deliberately reaches across every American conflict rather than singling out one war. Memorials like this became a fixture of county courthouse squares and city parks across the twentieth century.
Pleasant Grove Cemetery
Princeton, TX
Pleasant Grove Cemetery took its first burial in 1891 with Malissa Sides, believed to be half Native American and a survivor, with her Cherokee half-sister, of the U.S. government's removal of the tribe. The pair came to Collin County from Indian Territory, and later that year a Methodist family donated the land — including Mrs. Sides' grave — as a public burial ground. Among its thousand-plus graves lie 141 infants, testament to harsh pioneer life, alongside Confederate and other war veterans.
Gold Star Families Memorial Monument
Frisco, TX
The Gold Star Families Memorial Monument is part of a national network of monuments conceived by Hershel 'Woody' Williams, the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Battle of Iwo Jima, to honor the families of American service members killed in the line of duty. The term 'Gold Star' dates to World War I, when families hung service flags with a blue star for each member serving and replaced it with a gold star if that person died. This Frisco monument continues a century-old American tradition of publicly honoring military sacrifice across every war.
Officer J.D. Tippit
Dallas, TX
On November 22, 1963, less than an hour after President Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit stopped a man walking through his Oak Cliff patrol area and was shot dead at this intersection by Lee Harvey Oswald. A citizen used Tippit's own radio to call for help, and the manhunt that followed led witnesses to trail Oswald into the nearby Texas Theatre, where he was arrested. Tippit, who left a wife and three children, was posthumously honored for valor and is remembered for the events his death set in motion.