By Frances James (1922 – 2019)
The Sowers Cemetery in Irving is located on Pioneer Road near the intersection with Grauwyler. The land for the cemetery is a portion of the Peters Colony 320 acre G.W. Parson Survey. When Illinois native Edmund (1826-1909) and Freelove Thompson Sowers (1833-1901) came to Texas in 1856 they found that this land on the west side of Dallas County was available. It was transferred to the Sowers on the 19th day of December in 1856.
Since Edmund’s father, Henry Sowers, had died in Pulaski County, Illinois in 1855, his mother Mary Walker Sowers (1801-1871) came to Texas with them and lived with Freelove and Edmund. In 1871 Sowers donated one acre of land for a community cemetery possibly when his mother died. She is buried here. The first burial in this cemetery is said to have been an unknown mother and child in 1868. One of the more elaborate markers in this cemetery is that of Edmund and Freelove Sowers. It is said that this expensive marker was purchased with the money from the sale of sixty-five acres of land.
Edmund was a blacksmith and practiced that trade while clearing his land and fencing it with rails to keep cattle and other animals from destroying his crops. He built a two story house that took three years to complete as he had to haul in the lumber and other supplies. He farmed his land. In 1877 he built a store near the road and this was where the other four or five families who lived nearby came to get supplies. In 1883 the mail route was established between Dallas and Grapevine and the Post Office was in his store where he served as Postmaster until 1890. Every Fourth of July, the Sowers sponsored a picnic and a dance at the park on his property. Fliers were distributed inviting every one in the village.
Mr. Sowers provided for a one room community school in the 1880s. By 1903 this was enlarged into a two story building with the lower floor being used as a school and a church and the upper floor being used as a hall for the Woodmen of the World. When Mr. Sowers decided to sell his store, William Haley one of the nearby settlers acquired it and ran it for the next sixteen years.
For many years there was no organization or assignment of lots, and the original site was running out of space. In 1900 Edmund donated another acre of adjoining land and in 1926 Otis Brown, one of the original founders of the town of Irving in 1903, gave an adjacent site divided into blocks for the balance of the two and one half acre cemetery.
James, Frances, “Dallas County History – From the Ground Up, Vol. III,” 2011.
Get future posts by email.
