Cannon Cemetery

The marker notes a section for former slaves and the 1880 burials of Billy and Glory Boyd. A Van Alstyne Historical Society account explains the surname: it says Elijah Cannon freed the people he had enslaved and gave each the name Boyd and twenty acres of land. The account dates that to January 1862, a year before the Emancipation Proclamation and well before General Granger announced freedom in Texas on June 19, 1865, so it is best read as local tradition. Cannon himself was buried here in September 1887, aged ninety-one.

What the plaque says

Cannon Cemetery Elijah Cannon, his eleven sons, and slaves moved from South Carolina to Texas in 1852 and settled nearby. In 1874 the family graveyard was included in land deeded by O. M. Cannon as a community burial place. The oldest documented grave is that of ten-year-old Nancy J. Bowen in 1857. An adjacent section was established for former slaves, and the earliest known burials are those of Billy and Glory Boyd in August 1880. Among the more than 700 graves are those of pioneer settlers, veterans of several wars, and members of fraternal organizations. The cemetery continues to serve the area. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 19 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 20 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Old Town of Cannon — 1.3 mi
• James P. Dumas — 1.8 mi
• Fifrty Feet North to Grave of Collin McKinney — 3.8 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Van Alstyne — 4.1 mi