Ash Creek Cemetery

Azle was not always Azle. The Handbook of Texas says Dr. James Azle Steward moved into a cabin built by a Dutchman named Rumsfeldt in 1846. When a post office opened in 1881, the town was called O'Bar, for the man who obtained it. Steward then donated land for a townsite on condition that it be named Azle, and the name changed. Wheat, corn, cotton and fruit carried the economy, then dairies selling milk to Fort Worth creameries, until the highway reached town in the 1930s and houses began replacing fields.

What the plaque says

Ash Creek Cemetery The oldest known graves in this community burial ground are those of Dave Morrison (1849-1874) and W. P. Gregg (1833-1874). Dr. James Azle Stewart, for whom Azle is named, and John Giles Reynolds, early grist mill operator, each donated an acre of land to establish the cemetery. Both Stewart and Reynolds are buried here. The Azle Cemetery Association was organized in 1922 to care for the site and to keep burial records. The Association bought additional land in 1932, 1947 and 1959 and constructed a tabernacle on the grounds. There are over 2,000 graves in Ash Creek Cemetery. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 13 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 14 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.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 14 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.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 15 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.

More markers nearby

• Ash Creek Baptist Church — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Azle — 0.5 mi
• Coho and Nancy Jane Smith Farmstead Site — 1.1 mi
• Kiowa Raid on Walnut Creek — 2.8 mi