By Frances James (1922 – 2019)
The Overton Family and Community Cemetery is a one-acre cemetery located at the corner of Overton Road and Leatherwood, two blocks northeast of the 3200 block of E. Illinois in Dallas, County. This land was a portion of the Dugold MacFarland Survey of 1280 acres. MacFarland received a patent for Bounty Land from the Republic of Texas for his participation in the War with Mexico. As happened many times after this war, the government was encouraging new citizens to come to this undeveloped land and John Nolen was one of the land managers. MacFarland assigned his patent to Nolen. Nolen did not find a buyer for 640 acres of this survey as it was deeded by Nolen to Aaron Overton in 1851 for payment of back taxes.
North Carolina native Aaron Overton (1784-1860) and two sons, Caswell C. and William Perry came to Texas in November 1844 and were among the first seven men to settle in Dallas County. All three of the men were issued certificates for 320 acres of land. They first settled on land where Oak Cliff stands. After the two-month journey from Missouri, as he had done in two other locations, Aaron build a horse mill having a capacity of 100 bushels of wheat a day. He made a trip back to Missouri each fall until 1847 when he brought the rest of his family to Texas. After purchasing this land in 1851, Aaron erected a water mill and two years later he built what was known as Honey Springs Mill.
Aaron’s son, Missouri Native William Perry Overton (1822-1903) married Martha Ann Newton (1828-1884) also a native of Missouri in 1847 and they eventually had seven children. In the spring of 1850, William left Dallas, joining the gold seekers who went to California, where he stayed for eighteen months. In 1853 he came back to Texas and traded his head right to his father for the Honey Springs site where the mill was. This area and the mill were well known by other families living one hundred miles away as they brought their wheat and corn to have it ground in this facility. In 1866 William returned to farming on his land where he concentrated on raising Durham cattle and Berkshire hogs.
The first home, erected by Aaron in 1844, was of logs. These walls were later enclosed with lumber in 1852-3 with lumber hauled from Palestine in Anderson County making it one of the first frame houses in Dallas County. During the Civil War, the house served as a hospital for sick or disabled soldiers. The family was host to weary travelers and needy friends passing by. Frank James was said to have stayed in the house for seven weeks recovering from an illness. In 1928 the house was still being used as a residence and it was noted that it was one of the oldest houses in Dallas County. On March 3, 1928 a feature article in the Dallas Morning News mentioned the literally hundreds of heirlooms and relics collected by the Overton ancestors from three continents and preserved by the descendants!
The cemetery was started on their land when eight year old Lizzie E. Overton died in 1870. She was the daughter of William Perry and Martha Newton Overton. In 1873 a son, Caswell, died at the age of seventeen. Oscar Alonzo, another son died in 1880 at the age of twenty-six. Martha died in 1884. Of the sixteen grave markers inside the fenced area, ten are Overtons.
William Perry Overton married for the second time in 1885 to Mrs. Jessie Davis Price (1849-1928). The father of Jessie Price Overton, Henry C. Davis, a native of Shirfield Hampshire, England was killed in an accident on the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad in 1889 and is buried inside the family area. Davis was seventy-three when the accident happened.
Another respected citizen of the community was Dr. Kaiza Tsukahara (1873-1928), a medical doctor who was known as “Dr. Jap” by the black patients that he cared for – as his patients could not pronouce his name. He later had an office in South Dallas. His grave was in the front corner of the fenced portion of the cemetery. After many years, his descendants who still live in Dallas had his ashes removed from the Overton Cemetery and reburied at Grove Hill Cemetery in Dallas in the year 2000.
Ollie Leatherwood (1894-1979) is another non-family member burid in the fenced in area. Ms. Leatherwood’s family had lived on Overton land and when her family decided to leave this area she chose to stay in Dallas County and moved into the house with the Overton family. In appreciation for her being there for them, the family gave her four rent houses and the rest of the acre of land denoted as a cemetery. There was also a small Baptist Church built on this land. The Overtons did not deed it to her. She lived in one of the houses and rented out the other three. On the property outside the fenced area Ollie allowed other neighbors to be buried. The money she received from the rent houses and burials supported her until she died in 1979. This generosity has since created a serious problem as the surrounding graves are in a high weed, overgrown area, some with markers and some without. An inventory of the remaining markers was completed by a Boy Scout Troop when they cleared the site of the overgrowth in 2004.
The area inside the 90 x 90 foot fenced section of the cemetery is where immediate family members are buried and is maintained by a descendant who is nearly ninety years old. She feels no obligation to maintain the entire area and neither do her descendants. It is now a problem for the City to try and find a responsible party.
William Ward Overton (1897-1987) a descendant of Aaron Overton had been born in Kansas City, Kansas but later came to Dallas County and was involved in the assembling of ten acres of land in downtown Dallas along with Clint Murchison. His son W. T. Overton was one of the developers of One Main Place that was a very innovating complex when completed in 1968 in Dallas.
The entire cemetery has been designated a Historic Texas Cemetery and is recorded as such in the County Records. The medallion on a large slab of granite is now covered by the tall grass and weeds. This method of marking the site of the complete cemetery will assure that the history of these pioneer families will not be completely forgotten.
Frances James, “Dallas County History – From the Ground Up, Book I,” 2007.
