Morgan Hood Survey Pioneer Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere out there, about seventy-five feet southeast of where you're standing, or driving past, more likely, there's a piece of ground that's been keeping its secrets for well over a hundred years. This is the Morgan Hood Survey Pioneer Cemetery, and I'll warn you right now: this is one of those stories where the silence is louder than the telling.

The land was originally part of the Morgan Hood Survey. And tucked into it, this small cemetery, abandoned for more than a century now. Of everything that was once here, only one visible grave remains.

And what marks it? Portions of a sandstone burial cairn. That was the way people did it out here in the eighteen-fifties through the eighteen-seventies.

No fancy headstone, no engraving. Just sandstone, stacked up to say: somebody mattered here. Somebody was mourned here.

Now, here's where it gets to you. There are no written records. None.

The graves are the subject of speculation; that's the word the marker uses, and it's the right one. One possibility, though, one that historians have turned over carefully: these may be members of the Peters Colony. Early pioneers who came into the Grapevine area in 1844.

May be. Might be. The land won't confirm it, and the records can't.

Nearly all traces of the cemetery are gone now. Nearly all. But not quite.

That one cairn, those few pieces of sandstone, still out there in Tarrant County, still doing the only job they were ever asked to do. Some reminders don't need words. They just need to still be standing.

What the marker says

Originally part of the Morgan Hood Survey, this small cemetery (75 ft. SE) has been abandoned for over a century. Its one visible grave is marked with portions of a sandstone burial cairn, a common method of marking graves in this area in the 1850s-1870s. The subject of speculation since no written records remain, the graves may be those of members of the Peters Colony, early pioneers who entered the Grapevine area in 1844. Although nearly all traces of the cemetery are gone, it serves as a reminder of Tarrant County's early days of settlement. (1983)