By Frances James (1922 – 2019)
When you drive down the 9000 block of Audelia Road, you might not be aware of the McCree Cemetery behind the telephone company building. The approximately three and a half acre cemetery is on a portion of Peters Colonist Harrison Hostead’s Survey No. 587.
Virginia native Harrison Hostead (1800-1852) and Prudence Bartlett (1815-1900), also a native Virginian, were married in 1833. They moved to Illinois where they stayed for several years before coming to Texas with their six children. They first homesteaded a section of land bounded by today’s roads, Plano, Kingsley, Miller and Audelia.
In 1845 they sold this section and acquired land near what is now Duncanville. Here they built a log cabin in the Cedar Mountains and provided a family cemetery site. This is where Harrison was buried when hie died in 1852. In 1872 the graves were moved to Five Mile Cemetery and Prudence was buried next to him in 1900.
The Survey No. 587 land was then acquired by other settlers. E. H. McCree and Mahulda Bonner were married in Dallas County in 1859. They purchased several acres of the survey and that is where they lived. E. H. McCree must have died before 1866 as that is when Mahulda deeded 1.5 acres for a public graveyard and she signed the deed. The deed stated that it was given, granted, released, and conveyed unto William McCullough and James E. Jackson exclusively for a graveyard forever. Witness to the legal document were Daniel McCullough and James Newton.
The first burial in an unmarked grave is said to be that of John Henry Jones who came home sick from being wounded in the War Between the States and died in 1862. The second oldest burial was Eleanor Elizabeth McCullough born in 1835 and died in 1864. There are 254 recorded burials in this cemetery.
In 1896 one dollar was paid to Benjamin Prigmore for five/eighths of an acre to be held by J. E. and his wife J. A Griffin and his successors in trust for a public burial ground. Benjamin (1830-1901) came to Texas in 1844 with his parents Joseph and Mahala Dixon Prigmore. Though he was not quite seventeen he joined the army and served in the war with Mexico during 1847-1848 in Central Mexico. He enlisted in Witt’s Company (Company K) First Texas Mounted Volunteers. When he returned to Dallas County as a single man he qualified for a 320 acre Peters Colony grant about where Richland College is located now. In 1853 Benjamin married Tennessee native Lucinda Jackson (1833-1904). She was the sister of a fellow soldier. Lucinda and Benjamin had six children, two sons and four daughters. He volunteered in the Confederate Army in 1862, 19th Texas Cavalry, he was in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and the Indian territory, but was never wounded nor was he captured.
He returned to his family and in 1867 a tornado came through and destroyed his home and other buildings on the farm. Lucinda and Benjamin’s ten year old daughter, Eliza (1857-1867) was killed. She is buried in McCree Cemetery. Other members of his family are buried in this cemetery. This is the same storm that destroyed the one room school house that was being used by the Mount Calvary Baptist Church. This was west of Central near the Mount Calvary Cemetery and killed an entire Black family.
In 1929 J. D. Robertson leased one and one-half acres to C. W. Jackson, T. B. Crosby and John Dixon for $250.00 to be used for a church and the cemetery.
The pioneer families in the community built a small church on the property and it was used by different religious groups for revivals and a Sunday School. The Methodists were the first to use the site. When they moved on a new group organized the Rogers Baptist Church. The church later moved to Jupiter Road, its present home.
After the little building burned, the land reverted back to the cemetery. In 1940 a deputy sheriff caught eighty-nine boys and girls wrecking the structure and attempted to get the money to repair the damage from them.
A Texas Historical Marker was placed at this cemetery in 1986. The dedication was attended by descendants of Eleanor Elizabeth and William McCullough, the Crosby family, the James E. Jackson family, Hannah and James Newsom, Fereby and John Henry Jones and the Dockins family. The Dockins family was recognized for the years they have maintained the site where their ancestors are buried.
There are four Confederate veterans buried here, one Mexican War veteran, and early Texas Ranger and a member of the Texas Mounted Volunteers of the U. S. Army, Andrew Sloan Jackson.
Adjacent to the White McCree cemetery is a Black cemetery. According to the County records Jeff Hill, George, John and Monroe Parker filed a deed in 1896 for part of the property declaring it “solely for graveyard pur0oses for the interment of the colored people in the community.” Twenty-five dollars was paid to J. E. Griffin for the one acre, more or less. The head stone for Jeff Hill who is buried in this section says that he was a Private in the Ordnance Department in WWI. Jeff Hill had a grocery store in “Little Egypt” and was a member of the Little Egypt Baptist church. He died in 1947. Among the others buried here are Robert Parker, 1920, W. C. Hunter, 1926 and Lily Gidding, 1914.
An anonymous donor who was a member of the White Rock Rotary Club donated funds to enclose this portion in a new fence. The Boy Scouts have cleared both sides several times, cutting back the vines and bushes.
Three women solicited donations for the maintenance of this site, only one is still alive and she is now blind. Her daughter does not want the responsibility she has inherited. When the small endowment is gone it will be up to the Boy Scouts and others in the neighborhood to protect and preserve the site.
James, Frances, “Dallas County History – From the Ground Up, Vol. III,” 2011.
