Williams Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Williams Cemetery in Collin County. Now settle in, because this one starts the way so many Texas stories do: with a man, a land grant, and a whole lot of open country. Grafton Williams came to this area in 1843, riding in with the Peters Colony and picking up a 640-acre land grant in the process.

Six hundred and forty acres. That's a section of Texas land, and in 1843, that was the whole world. Grafton got to work, and he was active in the creation of what folks called the Whites Grove Settlement right here on this ground.

Things were taking shape. A community was putting down roots. And then, in 1848, Harriet Williams died.

Grafton's wife. And right there is where this story turns from the story of one man's land into the story of a whole community's memory. Because Grafton Williams, in the wake of that loss, donated a piece of that land for use as a community cemetery.

Now somewhere along the way, people started calling it Mount Olive Cemetery, on account of the Mount Olive Baptist Church that once stood adjacent to it. Two institutions, side by side, holding the community together from both ends. The years moved on, the way years do, and by 1885 enough people cared enough about this place that they formed the Williams Cemetery Association to keep it maintained and looked after.

And here's a detail that'll stick with you: in 1927, a man named Samuel Payne willed land to the cemetery, and the Association has been using funds from the sale of that land ever since. One man's gift, still doing its work long after he was gone. Today, Williams Cemetery is still active.

Still receiving. Still a link, as the marker puts it, to the community's heritage and its early residents. Some places just refuse to be forgotten, and this is one of them.

What the marker says

Grafton Williams came to this area in 1843 with the Peters Colony and received a 640-acre land grant. He was active in the creation of Whites Grove Settlement here. After his wife Harriet's death in 1848, he donated land for use as a community cemetery, sometimes called Mount Olive Cemetery because the Mount Olive Baptist Church was once adjacent to it. The Williams Cemetery Association, formed in 1885, maintains the site, using funds from the sale of land willed to the cemetery in 1927 by Samuel Payne. Today the burial ground, still active, is a link to the community's heritage and early residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2000