DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in what's now Dallas County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding stories since before Dallas was much of anything at all. This is the story of Keenan Cemetery — and it starts, as so many of the hardest stories do, with a tiny grave.
Thomas Keenan, born 1808, and his wife Sarah McCallister Keenan, born 1807, came to this country as members of the Peters Colony in 1842. They were pioneers in the truest sense — building life out of raw land, raw weather, and raw uncertainty. And then, on November 11, 1843, their two-month-old son John died.
They buried him right there on that site. That little boy's grave became one of the earliest cemeteries in present-day Dallas County. Think about that a moment.
A family barely settled, barely standing, and already giving the earth one of their own. The marker notes that the large number of early infant graves here are testimony — that's the word it uses, testimony — to the hardships endured by the area's pioneer settlers. This ground didn't just hold one family's grief.
It held a whole frontier's worth of it. But life kept moving, the way it does. In 1846, the Keenans opened their log cabin — their home — so that the Reverend David Myers could organize the area's first Baptist Church right there inside those walls.
Union Baptist Church, they called it. Reverend Myers himself was later buried in this same cemetery in 1853. The church eventually erected a sanctuary nearby, and the cemetery and the church stayed closely bound to each other across the decades.
In 1875, a deed executed by John R. West conveyed one and a half acres to the church, and in that deed, the cemetery was legally set aside. So the ground that began with one family's sorrow was, by then, properly and permanently claimed.
Thomas Keenan, who had carried that grief since 1843, died in 1879. Sarah had gone before him — she passed in 1872. They're both buried there, alongside many of their descendants.
Time kept adding names to that ground. Veterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War all the way to the Vietnam Conflict rest here. The earliest settlers of the area, and the children and grandchildren who followed them, found their way back to this same three acres.
By 1938, the Farmers Branch Keenan Cemetery Association was established to maintain the grounds, because some places earn that kind of care. Today, that cemetery covers three acres and holds about six hundred marked grave sites — and somewhere between a hundred and two hundred more that are unmarked, their stories quieter now, but still there. Six hundred names we can read.
A couple hundred more we can only reckon with. All of it starting with a two-month-old boy named John, buried on a November day in 1843, by a family who had just barely arrived. That's the kind of beginning that demands you pay attention.
What the marker says
Thomas (1808 - 1879) and Sarah McCallister Keenan (1807 - 1872) came to this area as members of the Peters Colony in 1842. When their two-month-old son, John, died on November 11, 1843, they buried him at this site, establishing one of the earliest cemeteries in present-day Dallas County. The large number of early infant graves are testimony to the hardships endured by the area's pioneer settlers. Thomas and Sarah Keenan and many of their descendants are buried here. The area's first Baptist Church, Union Baptist, was organized in the Keenans' log cabin in 1846 by the Rev. David Myers, who was buried here in 1853. The church, which erected a sanctuary nearby, was closely associated with the cemetery and in a deed executed by John R. West conveying 1.5 acres to the church in 1875 the cemetery was legally set aside. The Farmers Branch (Keenan) Cemetery Association was established in 1938 to maintain the grounds. The cemetery covers three acres and contains about 600 marked and an estimated 100 - 200 unmarked grave sites. Among the people buried here are many of the area's earliest settlers and their descendants and verterans of conflicts ranging from the Civil War to the Vietnam Conflict.