Smith-Frazier Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, Fort Worth had its share of businessmen in the boom years after the Civil War, but J.J. Jarvis was cut from a different cloth.

He bought land out here in 1871 (this was raw Texas country, mind you) and sometime in the early 1880s he built himself a home on the property. But Jarvis wasn't just accumulating land and calling it a day. He was known as a benefactor to the area's black institutions, and in 1886 he put that reputation into action.

He deeded this very site to two men: Charles Young and Allen Prince, to serve as a burial ground for Azle's black community. Now here's the thing that stops you cold when you think about it; when that land was conveyed, there were already graves here. Already.

Somebody had been laying their people to rest on this ground before the deed was ever signed. The story starts earlier than the paperwork. Over time, the site passed out of those original hands and was inherited by descendants of two pioneer families: the Smiths and the Fraziers, and their names are the ones that stuck.

The Smith-Frazier Cemetery. Still in use to this day, still receiving the community it was always meant to hold, still standing as a reminder of the early settlers who put down roots (and bones) in this corner of Tarrant County. Some legacies get built in stone.

Some get built in the quiet permanence of the ground itself.

What the marker says

Fort Worth businessman and philanthropist J.J. Jarvis bought land here in 1871 and built a home on the property in the early 1880s. A benefactor to the area's black institutions, he deeded this site to Charles Young and Allen Prince in 1886 as a burial ground for Azle's black community. Several graves were already located here when the land was conveyed. The site was later inherited by descendants of the pioneer Smith and Frazier families. Still in use, the Smith-Frazier Cemetery serves as a reminder of the area's early settlers.