Parrish Family Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. James and Eliza Parrish, she was born a Record, Eliza Record, came to this patch of Texas in 1853 with a 640-acre Peters Colony land grant in hand. Six hundred and forty acres.

That's a lot of promise, a lot of horizon, a lot of future to build on. And they settled right here. But the year that brought them to this land also took James from it.

He died that same year, 1853, leaving Eliza with all those acres and everything that comes with starting over. What she did next tells you everything about the kind of woman she was. She set aside one-half acre, just a half acre out of all that land, for a family burial ground.

A place to keep her people close. Now, here's where the story deepens in that quiet way life sometimes does. Eliza's second husband was Henry Parrish; James's own brother.

Henry would be buried here too, come 1866. And six of their seven children, along with their descendants, found their rest in that same half acre Eliza had the foresight to consecrate. Eliza herself lived a long life, long enough to see generations come and go, before she was laid to rest here in 1918.

She outlasted two Parrish husbands and watched this little plot fill up with family. Her father, Josiah Record, is here. Two of her brothers, John and Silas, are here.

More than thirty-five members of the Parrish family have been buried on this ground. Thirty-five souls, rooted in Coppell, all tracing back to that one woman who, in the hardest year of her life, thought to make a permanent place for the people she loved. That half acre says more about Eliza Parrish than most monuments ever could.

What the marker says

James and Eliza (Record) Parrish received a 640-acre Peters Colony land grant and settled here in 1853. When James died later that year, Eliza set aside one-half acre of land for a family burial ground. Since then, more than 35 members of the Parrish family have been buried here, including Eliza (d. 1918), her second husband Henry Parrish (James' brother, d. 1866), and 6 of their 7 children and their descendants. Eliza's father, Josiah Record, and two of her brothers, John and Silas, are also buried here. The cemetery records this extended family's long-time presence in Coppell.