Burnam Square and Cemetery

Burnam Square lost its future to a railroad in 1871, and the Handbook of Texas records that the loss turned violent. When Ennis was platted along the new line, the people of Burnham, as the Handbook spells it, answered being bypassed by attacking the new community, killing one man and wounding several. Burnham's Cumberland Presbyterian church moved to Ennis in 1872 and became its first. The plaque says the land was bought in 1856 for the price of an enslaved man named John, so slavery sits at the town's origin; the cemetery holds forty graves.

What the plaque says

Burnam Square and Cemetery William R. and Edeline House bought the land on which Burnam Square and Cemetery were located in 1856 for the price of a slave named John. In 1861, after her husband died, Edeline House had the 25-block town laid out and donated one acre for a graveyard. The Houston and Texas Central Railroad bypassed Burnam Square in 1871 and founded Ennis. Residents and businesses moved here, causing Burnam Square to decline. The 40-grave burial site is all that remains of the once thriving community of Burnam Square. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 19 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 29 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.

More markers nearby

• Jack Lummus — 0.3 mi
• Jay Justin Clarke — 0.5 mi
• Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church — 0.5 mi
• Town of Ennis — 0.5 mi