Highland Cemetery

Duane's take

The marker tells it this way, and I'm just here to pass it along. Out here in north central Collin County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding history since before the Civil War even got started. This is the story of Highland Cemetery, and it goes back further than most folks think to look.

The Highland community itself rose up in the mid-1800s, born as a stop on the stage route running between Buckner, which sat about three miles west of where McKinney stands today, and Bonham. Coaches rolling through, dust settling, people putting down roots. That's how communities happen.

An early settler by the name of Charles H. Wysong looked at that land and decided it needed something permanent. In 1858, he donated three acres (three acres of his own ground) set aside for a community church, a school, and a cemetery.

Three purposes. One gift. The kind of generosity that tends to outlast the man who offered it.

And sure enough, it did. The first marked grave in that cemetery belongs to Robert Strother, dated 1861. That's the oldest name anyone thought to put a stone over, and that stone has been standing watch ever since.

In the years that followed, pioneer after pioneer from north central Collin County found their final rest in that ground, and their descendants alongside them. Generation after generation, layer upon layer. Now here's the thing that'll get you, if you let it: the Highland Cemetery Association has been caring for that place for more than one hundred years.

More than a century of tending, of keeping the grass back and the memory forward. Nobody walked away from it. Nobody forgot.

Some promises, it turns out, are just stronger than time.

What the marker says

The Highland community was established in the mid-1800s as a stop on the stage route between Buckner (approximate 3 miles west of the present site of McKinney) and Bonham. An early settler, Charles H. Wysong, donated 3 acres of land for a community church, school, and cemetery in 1858. The first marked grave, that of Robert Strother, is dated 1861. Many north central Collin county pioneers and their descendants are buried here. The graveyard is cared for by the Highland Cemetery Association, organized more than one hundred years ago. (1985)