Bedford Cemetery

Bedford was once the second-largest town in Tarrant County. Weldon Bobo opened a store and gristmill in the 1870s, and settlers from Bedford County, Tennessee, chose the name. In the 1880s and 1890s the Handbook of Texas puts its population at 1,000 or even 2,000, with a reported twenty-eight businesses and Bedford College, founded in 1882 and gutted by fire in 1893. Then the Interurban in 1901 and the Rock Island in 1903 passed it by. The post office closed in 1909, and by 1940 no more than eighty people lived there.

What the plaque says

Bedford Cemetery Pioneers probably began using this graveyard during the 1860s. Earliest marked grave is that of Elizabeth White Bobo (1866-1871), whose parents came here in 1870 from Bedford County, Tenn. In 1877 Milton Moore deeded a five-acre tract, including this cemetery, to New Hope Church of Christ, now Bedford Church of Christ. The Bedford Church Old Settlers Reunion met here annually for over 50 years. W. L. Hurst (1833-1922), for whom nearby Hurst is named, is interred here. In 1975 the Bedford Cemetery Association acquired the site. Many Bedford pioneers are buried here in unmarked graves. (1979)

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.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 13 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.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 15 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 — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Arwine Cemetery — 2.2 mi
• Elisha Adam Euless — 2.3 mi
• Saint John Missionary Baptist Church — 2.5 mi
• Site of Mosier Valley School — 2.6 mi