Annetta Cemetery

Annetta grew from a freight station into three towns. The Handbook of Texas says a Mr. Fraser set up a station in the late 1870s for freighters hauling east toward Dallas and Jefferson, and named it for his daughter. After the Texas and Pacific passed nearby in the early 1880s, he built a store on the rail line. The Annetta post office ran from 1876 to 1907. Growth in the late 1970s split the place: Annetta North and Annetta South incorporated in the 1980s and counted 265 and 413 residents in 1990.

What the plaque says

Annetta Cemetery Community founder A. B. Fraser was a Confederate soldier who went into exile in Central America rather than declare allegiance to the Union. The Frasers named their daughter, who was born in Honduras, Anneta. The family returned to the U. S. in 1872, settling in Fort Worth, then moved a few miles west of the city in 1876. Fraser established a store and freight station near Weatherford and named the station for his daughter. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad built tracks through this area in 1880, it adapted the Fraser name, spelling it Annetta. Though it is likely that the site had already been used as a burial ground for several years before Edgar M. King was interred here in September 1882, his is the earliest tombstone on this site. King was the first of many of his family to be buried in Annetta Cemetery. Thirty-five infants' graves are dated between 1882 and 1910, a testament to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. Those interred here were civic and church leaders, educators, politicians, farmers, ranchers, merchants, and manufacturers. The Bell, Bledsoe, Chapman, Chew, Duncan, Nichols, Otto, and Winslow families are prominently represented, as are others who built the Annetta community. One burial is that of a veteran of the Civil War; other graves are those of veterans of several major United States and international wars and conflicts. More than 935 graves were counted in 1998. Fading railroad tracks and the Annetta Cemetery are all that remain to chronicle the passing of the pioneers of Annetta community. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chandor Gardens — 8.2 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 18 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 18 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Acton State Historic Site — 19 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.

More markers nearby

• Lawson Daniel Gratz — 2.5 mi
• Bankhead Highway in Aledo — 4.4 mi
• City of Aledo — 4.4 mi
• Texas Pythian Home — 5.3 mi