DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it the weight it deserves. Before Carrollton was much of anything on a map, there were African-American men and women doing the hard, daily work of building it. Many of them had been enslaved.
They settled here, they farmed here, and when their time came, they were laid to rest here — on this ground. By 1871, a portion of forty acres belonging to a man named Scott Boswell, Sr. — an African-American farmer — had become a community cemetery. Forty acres in his name.
That meant something. That was a statement made in dirt and deed, in a time when such things were anything but guaranteed. Decades passed.
In 1915, a man by the name of C.B. Baxley acquired the cemetery and the surrounding land. The burials continued.
Dozens of people rest here — dozens — and yet today, only three names remain visible on what markers survive: Ned Welch. Loving. Davis.
Three names standing in for a whole community of lives. The Elm Fork of the Trinity River did what rivers do when nobody's asking permission. It flooded.
And the flooding took the markers. Not the people — you can't wash away the fact of a life — but the names, the dates, the carved stone proof that someone stood here and said: this person mattered. Gone.
Joyce Collins, believed to have been buried in 1960, is thought to be the last. After that, silence. For a while, new development threatened to take what the river hadn't.
But this site held on. It is, the marker tells us plainly, a precious record of the early history of Carrollton. Precious is exactly the right word.
Because what's left isn't just a cemetery. It's the only place left to go looking for people the records forgot — and it is still here, still holding them.
What the marker says
Carrollton's early African-Americans, many of whom were former slaves, helped settle and build the community. By 1871, this portion of forty acres belonging to Scott Boswell, Sr., an African-American farmer, was a community cemetery. In 1915, C.B. Baxley acquired the cemetery and surrounding land. Although the site holds dozens of burials, only three names (Ned Welch, Loving, and Davis) are now visible. Joyce Collins (1960) is believed to be the last burial. No records exist for others buried here; flooding from the Elm Fork of the Trinity River destroyed many grave markers. Once threatened by new development, the site is a precious record of the early history of Carrollton. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2010