By Frances James (1922 – 2019)
The Western Heights Cemetery in the 1600 block of Fort Worth Avenue is about three and one-half miles west of the Dallas County Courthouse. The two acre cemetery is on a portion of the William Coombs 640 acre Survey Number 290. This cemetery was on the trail heading west and it is believed that several strangers who died along the way were buried here in the 1840-1860s. The earliest records for this community cemetery state that the first burial was of seventy-eight year old Augustine Byrum on June 27. 1848. The William Coombs Survey No. 290, today, would be bounded by Vilbig St. on the west, Singleton Blvd. on the north, Cedar Hill Ave. on the east, and a portion south of Ft. Worth Avenue.
Kentucky native forty-three year old William Coombs his wife, Ivy Green Coombs (1805-1847) and his three sons, Isaac (20) and Levan (22) and William, Jr. (18) immigrated to Texas in 1843 and all were eligible for, and received Peters Colony certificates for land. William had not been here long before his wife, the mother of the three sons, died in childbirth.
By 1850 widower, forty-seven year old William Coombs, married a widow, Rachel, who had two daughters. Their baby, Martha, was born in 1850 and the Coombs lived on their large farm west of the Trinity River.
La Reunion Colony purchased part of Levan Coombs’s survey for its village in 1855. Flanders Heights, one of the first planned additions for homes in this farming community was designed and built adjacent to this cemetery on its eastern side in 1884.
The Coombs Survey had been divided and sold in various portions through the years and the cemetery was part of a forty-two acre tract that B.M. Bradford (1815-18??) had purchased. He sold three acres in 1881 to Zachariah Coombs (1837-1917) and W.R. Fisher (1836-1900) for $15.00 that would allow the land to be used for a church and a “graveyard” forever.
Mr. Fisher was a grocer in West Dallas and his wife was Mary Ann Coombs, the daughter of J. N. Coombs. Pennsylvania native W.R. Fisher was one of sixteen children who learned the cabinet making trade when he was fourteen. He supported himself by working in Kentucky as a carpenter until the Civil War when he went to Virginia and enlisted in the Forty-Fifth Virginia Battery. At the second battle of Winchester, Virginia he was taken prisoner and confined in a Delaware prison for nine months, and three months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered. He worked on the Virginia and Tennessee railroad repairing bridges and building section houses until 1867 when he came to Texas. He worked for a year in Houston and came to the Dallas area purchasing seventy acres of the old Coombs homestead. He and Mary Ann were married in 1869. She died in 1873.
There has never been a church built on this property. Bradford and Coombs were elders of the West Dallas Christian Church in the 1880s, which was built several blocks away from the cemetery. Both Mr. and Mrs. W. R. Fisher were members of the Church of Christ.
In 1856 twenty year old John Loupot, arrived in Dallas County with fifteen cents in his pocket. He came from France to join the La Reunion Colony. He first found work herding sheep then farmed with the Colony for one year. He went to Kaufman County and worked on a farm for a few months and returned to Dallas to work for an uncle on his farm. John spent four years during the Civil War in Mexico freighting cotton. After he came back to Dallas he married Swiss native Rosina Getzer in 1869. He and Rosina had five children. Loupot was also a mason, having learned that trade from his father in France. He was responsible for constructing many early brick buildings in Dallas. By 1875 the Loupots owned a 160 acre farm west of the Trinity where they specialized in gardening and dairying. French native John (Jean) Loupot (1835-1904) and his wife, Rosina, who also came to Texas as a La Reunion colonist are buried in Western Heights Cemetery.
Widower Zachariah Ellis Coombs, son of William Coombs Jr., married Rebecca F. Bedford. On the Zachariah Coombs headstone in the Western Heights Cemetery, it states that he was a Captain in the 31st Texas Cavalry, Co. G, CSA, also a Mason and was Grand Master of Masons in Texas from December 1885 to December 1886.
The wording on a marker does not tell the complete story of this early settler in Dallas County. Coombs was elected County Judge in 1866. He was among the four hundred officers in fifty seven counties who were removed for failure to comply with the amnesty oath by the military commandants sent to Texas during the Reconstruction Period.
Coombs was an alderman for the City of Dallas in 1868-1872. He was again affected by this same upheaval following the Civil War. He and R. S. Kimbrough were State representatives in Austin in 1886. Zachariah was an original member of the Dallas County Pioneers when it was organized in 1875. In 1913, a clipping in the Dallas Morning News noted that the Hardin School (located on the corner of Main and Haskell) would hold its third commencement, and that Zachariah Coombs was a member of the Sigma Phi Society who would deliver a declamation.
One of the first female babies born in Dallas County in 1845, a granddaughter of Dr. John Cole, Mary Ellen Cole Tuggle (1845-1928), is buried in this cemetery as is her husband, William Thomas Tuggle (1843-1925) a Confederate veteran from Missouri. Who served in Walker’s Division and Young’s regiment. Their sons, daughter and several grandchildren are also buried nearby.
In 1922 Mrs. Anna Marie Struck (1854-1923) purchased one-sixth acre in the cemetery and dedicated it as a memorial family plot to honor her husband, Heinrich Frederich Struck (1856-1917) from Mecklenberg, Germany. Their son Henry Carl Struck, who served in the United States Army in World War I is buried here also.
Many of the over 400 known burials in Western Heights were the pioneers of Hord’s Ridge, later the town of Oak Cliff. Dallas annexed Oak Cliff in 1903 after several attempts to persuade the citizens that it would be better for them and for the children because of the expense of maintaining enough schools.
It is believed that the Church of Christ was first established in Dallas in 1852. A shortage of ministers to serve the vast sparsely settled area caused the church to organize a county cooperative to reach out to the people by 1856. The Pearl and Bryan Street Church with fifteen members (unable to substantiate) was described in the early history of the church written by Melvin Wise. These few members were concerned about the families west of the Trinity River and initiated missionary efforts across the river. The Pearl and Bryan Street Church invited General R. N. Gano to hold a revival in the old Mt. Airy schoolhouse in Oak Cliff in 1872. Although meeting at the schoolhouse and other locations, this is thought to be the first Church of Christ in Oak Cliff.
General Gano, a licensed medical doctor, was a remarkable man. He gave up medicine to join the Confederacy and fought in over 70 battles during the Civil War as a cavalry officer and five horses were shot under him. He was wounded only once. After the war he settled in Dallas County, owning land where the Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport is located. He became an ordained minister, raised thoroughbred horses, and surveyed previously uncharted portions of North Texas. In his daily journal, the general once wrote: “Today I surveyed 16 sections and saved 16 souls.” In the 1875 City Directory on page 18, he is listed as R. M. Gano, elder, being the pastor of the Christian Church. General Gano is buried in Oakland cemetery with many members of his large family.
The Christian Church and the Church of Christ divided over the use of musical instruments in the church during this time period.
It is not known if there has ever been an organization to maintain this cemetery. [See “Update – Western Heights Cemetery Association” below.] Through the last 100 years the various Christian Churches and Churches of Christ have united, dissolved, left the city, moved to the other side of the county, and sold their properties to each other, but through the years the Western Heights Cemetery has been maintained by volunteers. In the 1980s a fund was started to erect a fence around the property. When enough money was donated a fence was erected. Vandals have managed to cut it in several places, when the gates are locked. These desperate people are most interested in viewing the grave site of Clyde Barrow (1909-1934). Various tokens appear on his concrete embedded headstone. The headstone had been stolen and removed several times before the city crews returned it and finally set it in concrete to make its removal more difficult.
Through the years members of one of the churches would have a clean up day at the Western Heights Cemetery. From time to time Boy Scouts would be enlisted to help. Nearly twenty years ago a retired City of Dallas fireman and his wife, Steve and Opal Perry, decided they would personally maintain the cemetery as they had family members buried there. Using their own equipment, they did the work, hauled off the trash, cut back the vines, and wrote letters to known descendants asking for donations to establish a fund for the future. When their health no longer permitted this massive volunteer work to continue other means have been adopted.
Crews have been hired to mow the straggly grass and cut back the vines along the fence. One of the counselors at the Texas Youth Commission has used volunteers from its unlimited supply of manpower to maintain the site. These boys, assigned community service hours by the judges, receive no pay for their labor, but lunch is provided and equipment and material (gas for mowers, etc.) is provided from their own donated fund. When the local neighbors with no respect for this hallowed ground, dump their trash on the site, extra money has to be spent from the small fund to clean up the site.
In April and May of 2007 wind storms and heavy rain hit this section of town and many of the old trees were uprooted. Crews were hired to remove the trees and some of the headstones were damaged. Vast amounts of debris were piled outside the fence for the City of Dallas Sanitation Department to remove.
A Texas Historical Marker facing Fort Worth Avenue denotes the importance of this historical site.
Frances James, “Dallas County History – From the Ground Up, Book I,” 2007. – Revised and updated 2025
Update – Western Heights Cemetery Association
Van Johnson
Volunteer Coordinator
Western Heights Cemetery
In October 2023 we became a pilot cemetery in the Constellation of Living Memorials, and through them received a $5,000 matching grant from the Texas Historical Foundation to add native plants.
A few months later, also through CLM, we received $15,000 from the Summerlee Foundation. $8,000 was spent having the headstones cleaned with D2 by anthropology students from Dallas College under the supervision of an SMU anthropology graduate. $2,000 was spent by Preservation Dallas on research to file for Landmark Status with the City of Dallas. Although we have a Texas State Historical Marker, it offers no legal protection; Landmark status does. The remaining $5,000 is being spent on headstone repairs.
An extensive multi-source database has been compiled. In 1992 the Dallas Genealogical Society transcribed all of the headstones in the cemetery. Additionally, “Addendum A” listings were created by W. R. Conger and his students at Sunset High School, and/or Willie Flowers Carlisle listings on “Old Cemeteries of Dallas County.” These stones were no longer in evidence when DGS volunteers read the cemetery in early 1992. “Addendum B” lists the results of Juanita Durden Williams’ interviews with neighbors and descendants to compile a list of burials without markers.
In September 2023, Steve and Patti Erickson made a complete survey and transcription. They also photographed every stone multiple times to get the best possible lighting exposure: sunny morning, sunny afternoon, overcast day, etc. In October 2023, Dan Keininger of Texas Cemetery Restoration LLC performed a survey and transcription, also producing a very detailed map and establishing the GPS location of every marker. Our chief researcher Steve Erickson then took all of the Find A Grave listings and combined them with the other three sources above to produce four lines for every marker. Discrepancies were researched and reconciled, then the duplicate lines were deleted. Peggy van Wuunik researched the birth state and cause of death for all 700+ burials, and if available these have been appended to the database. Her search for obituaries containing the words Western Heights Cemetery or West Dallas Cemetery also added several more burials to our database.
As a result we have a database that is very complete vertically with regard to listing all of the known burials in the cemetery researched from easily or moderately available sources, although we continue to scour for more obscure sources. No doubt in a two-acre cemetery there are many more burials to be discovered. The database is also very complete horizontally and contains the genealogical information from the markers, Find A Grave, the grave number cross-referenced to the map, the GPS location of the marker, and, if available from obituaries and death certificates, the state of birth and cause of death. Since we have cross-checked so many sources and resolved multiple discrepancies, we believe that our database is very accurate.
All epitaphs have also been transcribed but not yet keyed into the database. Epitaphs are often not transcribed unless they contain genealogical information. They tend to appear in a smaller font, in italics, and lightly incised so they are often the first text to disappear from a stone. We’re proud to have permanently recorded these poetic comments. After the stones were cleaned, the anthropology students surveyed them, thoroughly inspecting and noting the condition of each one. As repairs are made, we will also be adding that information and dates thereof to the database so we have a complete history of modern repairs.
Six sunken markers have been unearthed, so we actually have more markers visible now than when we did during the 1992 survey! When our research team began their work in late September 2023, there were 636 Memorials on Find A Grave, and now there are 733. We were also able to eliminate at least 14 duplicate or erroneous entries, so 111 new memorials have been added in the last 24 months!
Starting with only eight military markers, we have now identified 25 veterans. 15 of those are from the Civil War, and five of those were Union soldiers. Research continues in this area. Veterans graves are marked with a medallion flag holder. The medallion shows the war in which the veteran served, and a tag that displays the veteran’s name and a QR code which when scanned links to photos and a biography.
Another area of research we spent time on is finding and documenting common connections between our many families. We’ve also located and contacted many descendants or other family members. A Western Heights Cemetery page was created on Ancestry so that the families and our researchers can more efficiently collaborate.
Thanks to an Eagle Scout project in early 2025 we now have guideposts that divide the cemetery into sections A1 through G6 corresponding to the map provided by Texas Cemetery Restoration LLC.
Due to the success and achievements of our many volunteers, Fort Worth Avenue Development Group has decided to transfer responsibility to a new organization, the Western Heights Cemetery Association, which is in the process of being incorporated and will take over management of the cemetery January 1st 2026. The 501(c)3 paperwork will take a little longer. A logo, website, Facebook page, Instagram account, LinkedIn presence, and a YouTube channel have all been created and will be launched publicly shortly. A Wikipedia page is also under construction. The WHCA board will have the benefit of input from three Advisory Councils: Arts, Descendants, and Veterans.
