Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every cemetery has a first stone. And out here in Dallas County, the first stone at what would become the Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery was laid in 1866, the year David A.

Jordan made a decision that only a grieving family understands. David Jordan, born in 1808, provided his own land to serve as a burial ground. Not for himself; not yet.

He had until 1879 before that day would come. No, the land was given first for Robert A. Hight, born in 1826, dead in 1866.

Robert was David's son-in-law. And when you lose someone that close, sometimes the most lasting thing you can do is give them a place to stay. So that's where it started.

A family burying its own. But the ground had a generous spirit, same as the man who gave it. Before long, the graveyard was made available to other residents of the area, and what had begun as something private became something shared: a public cemetery, holding the names and the stories of the whole surrounding community.

And the names that ended up here read like a roll call of local pioneer families. The Bowles. The Brannans.

The Robertsons. The Millers. The Jordans and the Hights themselves, generation upon generation, all finding their way back to that same piece of Dallas County ground that David Jordan set aside in the year of his grief.

Now, cemeteries, they need tending. And in 1955, nearly ninety years after David first turned that soil, the Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery Association was formed to see to exactly that. The care.

The maintenance. Making sure the names don't disappear. There's something to that, don't you think?

A man gives land in sorrow in 1866, and nearly a century later, an association of people is still showing up to honor that gift. The story didn't end with Robert Hight's burial. It just kept growing, same as the number of names on those stones.

That's the kind of place this is. It started with one family's loss, and became a whole community's memory.

What the marker says

This began as a family burial ground in 1866, when David A. Jordan (1808 - 1879) provided land for a cemetery in which to bury his son-in-law, Robert A. Hight (1826 - 1866). The graveyard was later made available to other residents of the area and became a public cemetery. Members of many local pioneer families are interred here, including the Bowles, Brannan, Robertson, Miller, Jordan, and Hight families. The Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery Association, formed in 1955, oversees care and maintenance of the cemetery. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986