Ford Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Pinkney Harold Ford, born 1831, died 1901, was the kind of man who held a family together across a long and uncertain road. He was the leader of a Kentucky family, and in 1855, he brought them all the way to Texas.

They put down roots in the area of North Arlington, in a place that went by the name of the Watson Community back in those days. Now, before any of this was Ford land, the original patent to this particular property belonged to a man named John J. Goodwin.

The ground had already been receiving the dead before Pinkney Ford ever arrived. The oldest marked grave on the property belongs to Maria Trayler, born in 1799, who passed in 1858; a soul who had seen nearly six decades of American life before this Texas soil became her final rest. Ford had lived through the Civil War as a veteran, and by 1879 he purchased this property and made a deliberate decision: he designated it as a community burial ground.

Not just for his family, for the community. He and his wife Elizabeth, who died in 1898, farmed land nearby, working the earth while setting aside this piece of it for those who would work no more. What surrounds that cemetery now isn't farmland or prairie.

Industrial development has closed in on all sides, pressing up against this quiet remnant of the Watson Community, the pioneer world that Pinkney Ford and his Kentucky family helped build. The ground holds its dead. The marker holds the story.

What the marker says

Pinkney Harold Ford (1831-1901) was the leader of a Kentucky family who migrated to Texas in 1855. They settled in the area of North Arlington, then known as the Watson Community. John J. Goodwin held the original patent to this cemetery property. The oldest marked grave is that of Maria Trayler (b. 1799), who died in 1858. Ford, a Civil War veteran, purchased this property in 1879 and designated this site as a community burial ground. He and wife Elizabeth (d. 1898) farmed land nearby. Industrial development has surrounded this remnant of the pioneer community. (1982)