Smithfield Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words. Out here in Tarrant County, there's a patch of ground that's been holding memories since the 1870s, and the story of Smithfield Cemetery starts, as so many Texas stories do, with a man who came from somewhere else looking for something better. Eli Smith was born in 1848, and around 1859 he made the journey from Missouri down to Texas.

He was barely into his twenties when, in the early 1870s, he did something that says a lot about a man's character: he cut loose a piece of his own farm and donated it as a cemetery. Land a farmer worked and counted on, given over to the long rest. The town of Smithfield, it carries his family's name to this day.

Now, the oldest marked grave in that cemetery belongs not to a veteran or a pioneer patriarch, but to an infant. Mattie J. Brownfield.

She died on October 13, 1872. There's a particular weight to that; the oldest name still legible on the oldest stone is a child who never got to be old. That tends to quiet a person down.

More than seventy-five graves date from the 1870s alone. Eli Smith himself, who only lived to 1879 (born 1848, gone before thirty-one), is among them. The man who gave the land ended up resting in it.

Dozens of years later, in 1924, another name was laid to rest here. Lilburn Howard Colley, born in 1843, a pioneer physician, was interred in this cemetery. You may recognize a version of his name; nearby Colleyville carries it forward.

And then there are the soldiers. Civil War veterans, men from both the Union and the Confederate Armies, buried here together in the same Tarrant County soil. Whatever they fought for, whatever they survived, the same ground took them in.

Smithfield Cemetery: a donated corner of one man's farm, the oldest stone marking a life that barely began, and generations of Texans, divided in life and united in rest.

What the marker says

Eli Smith (1848-79), for whose family the town of Smithfield is named, came from Missouri to Texas about 1859. In the early 1870s he donated part of his farm for the cemetery. The oldest marked grave is that of an infant, Mattie J. Brownfield, who died on Oct. 13, 1872. More than seventy-five graves, including that of Eli Smith, date from the 1870s. Pioneer physician Lilburn Howard Colley (b. 1843), for whom nearby Colleyville is named, was interred here in 1924. Numerous Civil War veterans, including men from both the Union and Confederate Armies, are also buried here.