By Frances James (1922 – 2019)
The Albert Carver Cemetery is located at the comer of Masters Drive and Bruton Road about nine miles southeast of the Dallas County Courthouse. The land for the family cemetery was donated by Albert Carver (1827-1911) from the 320 acres he acquired by trading a fine horse and saddle for some farmland.
Albert’s mother had died in Illinois when he was small and his father, George, had gone to Newton County, Missouri with Albert, his brother Daniel, and his sister Sarah Jane to live with Moses Carver and his wife Susan Blue Carver. Moses had established the Diamond Plantation and they had no children of their own. The Diamond Plantation was a well run enterprise and noted for raising fine horses. Soon after bringing the children to Susan and Moses to care for, George Carver died and is buried in the cemetery on the Plantation which is a National Monument.
The Diamond Plantation was designated the George Washington Carver National Monument by President Harry S. Truman in honor of the world renowned scientist George Washington Carver who was born and raised on the Diamond Plantation. His mother, a slave owned by Moses Carver, lived on the Carver’s plantation. The slave and her baby were kidnapped by border guerrillas in 1861. Moses organized a posse to get them back. The mother was never seen or heard from again, but the baby was found, ill from exposure. It was nursed back to health by Susan Blue Carver and Moses and raised by them as their own. He was taught to read and write and through his native abilities, when he left the plantation, managed to get an education and became a scientist. He was the first Negro to enroll at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa. George Washington Carver never married but devoted his life to helping illiterate farmers learn how to increase their crops. He was talented in music and painting, making his own paints. He was a singer as well as a research botanist. He produced some 60 synthetic products from the pecan, 100 from the sweet potato, and more than 300 uses for the peanut. He propagandized the planting of the soybean. George helped to end the south’s dependence on a single crop – cotton.
He died in 1913 after a fall on ice and is buried at Tuskegee Institute next to Booker T. Washington. He had accepted Booker T. Washington’s offer of a job for life in 1896.
When twenty-one, Albert Carver (1827-1911) left the Carver plantation and came to Texas joining his uncles, Abraham and Solomon Carver, and other kin folks who had been here since 1844. He worked on their farm, which was also in southeast Dallas County, and other farms for several years. By 1852, he decided to go back to Missouri and marry Mary Markham (1832-1899). Eventually they returned to Dallas and this is when he traded his fine horse and a saddle for the farm they purchased in the William T. Stewart Survey.
Mary and Albert had five sons, George, John, James, Thomas and Edward who all stayed in this area and raised their families nearby. Albert was noted as a breeder of Durham cattle. This specialty breed was used by Robert Kleburg and Charles Goodnight to improve their immense herds in south and west Texas.
John A. Carver (1856-1914) was a ginner by 1881 and in 1914 was elected in November to be one of the Dallas County Commissioners. He was ill and died before he could take office. He is buried in this cemetery.
The first marked gravesite is that of the infant son of James B. and Ophelia Carver. They had married in 1885 and buried three infants; one in 1885, one in 1886, and one in 1889. Ophelia (1867-1958) herself was the last person buried here.
Tragedy struck in 1933 when Mace Carver, born 1906, the son of Edward and Nancy Carver was murdered. Mace lingered long enough to identify the killers but died from his injuries.
The young lady, Miss Catherine Prince who was with Mace had died instantly. Due to the anger of the community at this atrocity, the case was taken to court and before two weeks had passed both murderers had been caught, indicted and sent to prison. Mace is buried in the cemetery.
Veronika Precechtil (1823-1909), born in Moravia, Austria, worked on the farms in the area and when he was buried in the cemetery those attending said later that this was the first burial with Catholic Rites spoken in Latin that any of them had ever witnessed. This may have been one of the only people buried in this cemetery that was not a member of one of the families.
Just across the trail from the cemetery was the land donated by Albert for a school. The structure was used from 1886 until 1916 when it was replaced by a brick building one mile north at Scyene. The first teacher was Miss Greenwood and the school was named for her. The school was the center of activity and for many of the students this was the only school they attended. They were too far from other schools and they just attended here until they were old enough to go to work.
There is a picture of some of the students that had been saved all these years by an old man. When interviewed he vividly recalled when a boy had been lowered into the well to retrieve the dipper that had fallen in and the rope broke! The well was filled in when the property was sold for a convenience store in the 1950s.
The curb and wrought iron fence surrounding the cemetery was erected in the 1980s when the zoning on land along Masters was developed for a strip shopping center. The developer, Sherwood Blount, was persuaded to protect the pioneer cemetery with a fence similar to the one that encloses the Abraham Carver Cemetery in Sandsprings Park. The trees in the cemetery have grown taller but still provide shade for the one lone lilac bush, planted by one of the Carver women in this cemetery.
There have been several accidents at this highly visible comer in Southeast Dallas that have damaged the fence. The Public Works Department of the City of Dallas has placed barricades in hopes to preserve the fence and the headstones very near the property line. A nearby church has provided maintenance several times as a community service. The Carver family members have moved away to other cities or feel no responsibility for the cemetery’s upkeep.
James, Frances, “Dallas County History – From the Ground Up, Vol. I,” 2007.
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