McCombs Cemetery

Duane's take

Now, what I'm about to tell you comes straight from the official marker for McCombs Cemetery in Denton County; let me lay it out for you the way it deserves to be told. This is a small cemetery, and it has been keepin' its secrets for a long time. We're talkin' the 1850s, before Denton had even been chosen as county seat.

That's how far back this ground goes. The story that anchors this place begins with a man named Nehemiah Wade Boyd, born in 1823, and his wife, Susan McCombs Boyd, born in 1824. They came with a wave of settlers (Nowlin, Sigler, and Rivers families among them) who arrived in 1855 out of Tennessee.

They brought with them Susan's mother, the family matriarch, Mary Nowlin McCombs, born in 1803. Six children made the journey. They were putting down roots in the Lewisville–Flower Mound area, and Nehemiah had work to do.

He was building a log cabin for his family. That's as honest and American a thing as a man can do: sweat and timber and the future taking shape with your own hands. But the Texas sky had other plans.

A blue norther rolled through, the kind that drops the temperature like a stone. Nehemiah was chilled to the bone. And then, suddenly, he was gone.

Pneumonia. Nehemiah Wade Boyd died in 1856. His brother-in-law, John Mathis McCombs, donated the land where Nehemiah was buried.

That piece of earth became something larger than one man's grave. Now here is where the story takes a turn that even the marker pauses over. Susan Boyd, widowed and in a new land, gave birth to their seventh child, the first of the Boyd children born in Texas.

That boy was George Taylor Boyd, born in 1856, and he would live all the way to 1933. His mother, Susan, outlasted nearly everyone; born in 1824, she lived until 1917. Ninety-three years on this earth.

The woman who buried her husband in frontier Texas lived long enough to see a different world entirely. For generations, Nehemiah's burial was believed to be the first in this cemetery. The first soul to consecrate the ground.

But then the archaeologists had their say. Evidence came to light suggesting that as many as one hundred individuals may have been buried here, and that this site was a community cemetery in active use from the 1850s all the way through the 1890s. Forty years of the county's dead, marked typically with native sandstone or brick, lying in a field that the modern world had nearly forgotten.

Nearly. Because in 1990, descendants of the Boyd family formed the McCombs Cemetery Association, specifically to protect this burial site from encroaching development. The cabin never got finished.

But the ground where Nehemiah Boyd rested held on. A hundred souls, maybe, sleeping under native stone while the county grew up around them. Some stories don't shout.

They just wait.

What the marker says

The history of this small community cemetery dates to the 1850s, before Denton was selected as county seat. The site contains graves of early pioneers of the Lewisville-Flower Mound area. Settlers included Nehemiah Wade Boyd (1823-1856), his wife Susan McCombs Boyd (1824-1917), their six children, family matriarch Mary Nowlin McCombs (1803-1867), and members of Nowlin, Sigler and Rivers families who arrived in 1855 from Tennessee. Nehemiah Boyd died suddenly of pneumonia after being chilled by a blue norther while building a log cabin for his family, and was buried on land donated by his brother-in-law, John Mathis McCombs. Susan Boyd later gave birth to their seventh child and first Texan, George Taylor Boyd (1856-1933). Although Nehemiah Boyd's burial was long believed to be the first, archeological evidence suggests as many as 100 individuals may have been buried here and that the site was a community cemetery in use between the 1850s and 1890s. Typically graves were marked with native sandstone or brick. Boyd descendants formed the McCombs Cemetery Association in 1990 to protect the burial site from encroaching development. (1997)