Sowers Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good cemetery's got a story, and Sowers Cemetery up in Dallas County is no different; except this one starts with a mystery it never quite lets go of. The year is 1868, and somewhere on the land of a local landowner named Seveir Smalley, two people are laid to rest.

A woman and her daughter. And here's the part that'll stay with you: their names have been lost. Nobody wrote them down, or if they did, that paper didn't survive.

So they've been here longer than almost anyone else in this ground, and we don't know what to call them. That's where this story begins. In the quiet, with the unnamed.

Six years go by. It's 1874, and a man named Edmund D. Sowers (born in 1826, and he'd live all the way to 1909, so he had time to think about these things) Edmund and his wife Freelove donate one adjoining acre as a public burial ground.

Freelove. Now there's a name you don't forget. Together, they give that land over, open it up, make it a place for the community to bring its people home.

And Edmund, he doesn't stop there. In his own family lot, he has an impressive monument erected. How impressive?

Well, he sold sixty-five acres of his own land to pay for it. Sixty-five acres. That's not a man hedging his bets; that's a man making a statement in stone.

Later on, a man named Otis Brown (born in 1879, died in 1958) he adds to the cemetery too, donating additional property to expand what the Sowers family started. And today, many pioneer settlers of this area rest here, kept in the care of the Sowers Cemetery Association. So the next time you pass through Dallas County and the land goes quiet and flat around you, think about what's underneath all that Texas sky.

Two women whose names we've lost. A man who sold sixty-five acres to honor his dead. And a community that kept showing up, acre by acre, generation by generation, to make sure nobody else got forgotten.

What the marker says

Burial plot was begun in 1868, when a woman and her daughter, whose names have been lost, were interred on the land of Seveir Smalley, a local landowner. In 1874, Edmund D. Sowers (1826 - 1909) and his wife, Freelove, donated one adjoining acre as a public burial ground. In his family lot, Sowers had an impressive monument erected, using proceeds from sale of 65 acres of his land. Additional property was donated by Otis Brown (1879 - 1958). Many pioneer settlers of this area are buried here. Cemetery is maintained by Sowers Cemetery Association.