The cemetery at this location was originally chartered in 1874 as Trinity Cemetery by William H. Gaston, W. H. Thomas and A. W. Morton. Gaston and Thomas were local banking partners and Morton was a Dallas undertaker.
At the time, it was a little out of town just off the old McKinney Road. The area consisted of about thirty acres of land. Within a year, the location numbered fourteen hundred cemetery lots, each twenty-two feet square. It was divided up by streets that were twenty-five feet wide and alleys that were six feet wide. An article in the July 3, 1875 issue of the Dallas Weekly Herald provided those details and credited city engineer Captain W. M. Johnson with having surveyed and mapped out the location. It was not without issues, however, as from time to time over the next twenty years, there were comments in area newspapers lamenting the condition of the facility, from overgrown weeds, cattle straying onto the grounds and the poor condition of a nearby pauper’s cemetery, the latter including comments about graves too shallow for proper burial and hygienic conditions.
Various solutions were proposed, including the formation of a new entity to be funded by capital contributions and annual assessments to take over management of the facility. The new company was to begin by grading and graveling all drives and walks, repairing lots where the original owners were all deceased or absent, repairing all fencing, prohibit the use of streets for traffic and have increased security by deputizing the keeper and assistant as deputy sheriff and special police.
Finally in 1896, the current officers of the Trinity Cemetery Company, being president G. W. Swink and secretary W. L. Henry conveyed its interest to the newly formed Greenwood Cemetery Association, still in existence.
Various Dallas families have members interred here including William H. Gaston, William H. Johnson, Jacob Boll, John Henry Brown, William Lewis Cabell, C. C. Slaughter, Alexander and Sarah Horton Cockrell, G. H. Schoellkopf, William Ahab Bowen, Adele Thevenet and many others.
Acknowledgements:
Frances James’ article: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35109/m1/30/?q=%22greenwood%20cemetery%22
Jim Wheat’s Dallas County Archives: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~jwheat/history/
