Millwood and Millwood Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker's the word here, and here's how Duane tells it. There's a town in Collin County that's mostly memory now, but the story of how it rose and faded is worth the telling. The place was called Millwood, and right there in the name you've got a clue to its beginnings: a lumber mill, established nearby about 1846, set the whole enterprise in motion.

By the early 1850s, Millwood had grown into something real; a post office, several businesses, and not just one mill but lumber, grist, and flour mills humming away. That's a town with ambition. That's a town with plans.

The town prospered, too, well into the early 1900s. But towns, like most things, have their seasons. Now, out on the edge of what was once Millwood, there's a cemetery.

And cemeteries, friends, have their own stories, and their own arguments. The first burial officially on record is Willie O. Hunt, laid to rest in 1864.

That's the recorded version. But local tradition? Local tradition says this ground was consecrated a full decade earlier, in 1854, with the passing of a woman named Nancy Bulloch, wife of James W.

Bulloch, hero of the Battle of Nacogdoches. Early accounts even called it the Nancy Bulloch Cemetery in her honor. Whether 1854 or 1864, generations of folks in Collin County found their final rest in this quiet place.

The town around it eventually didn't. The businesses closed, the mills went silent, the post office moved on. But Millwood Cemetery remains, maintained to this day by a local association, the last standin' remnant of a town that once had lumber dust in the air and flour on its hands.

All that's left is the ground that remembers.

What the marker says

Named for a lumber mill established nearby about 1846, Millwood contained a post office, several businesses, and lumber, grist, and flour mills by the early 1850s. Although Willie O. Hunt's burial in 1864 is the first recorded here, local tradition claims this cemetery began in 1854 with the death of Nancy Bulloch, wife of James W. Bulloch, hero of the Battle of Nacogdoches. Early accounts refer to it as Nancy Bulloch Cemetery. The town prospered until the early 1900s. Millwood Cemetery, maintained by a local association, is all that remains of the former town of Millwood. (1994)