Hillcrest Cemetery

Two plaques at Hillcrest tell different stories about its war dead. This one counts five known Civil War veterans; the second plaque, THC 11987, says more than forty-six. That second marker also gives the cemetery's founding: in 1878 civic leaders formed the Forney Graveyard Company and bought five acres, after the railroad town replaced Brooklyn and its old burial ground grew inconvenient. It names Blanch Ivey and Isaac Sorey, both dead in 1879, as the earliest documented burials, says the Hill Crest name dates from about 1911, and records a perpetual care endowment in 1976.

What the plaque says

Hillcrest Cemetery The grave of M. Elizabeth Collins (1813-1867), the earliest marked in this burial ground, predates the settlement of Forney. In 1880 the site was platted and formally set aside as a public cemetery for the growing railroad town. It was later enlarged through additions of adjoining land. Early efforts to provide maintenance for the cemetery included a brief experiment which allowed sheep to graze on the grounds. Burials in Hillcrest Cemetery include those of pioneer area settlers, prominent community leaders, and five known veterans of the Civil War. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 12 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 12 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 17 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 17 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• The Forney Messenger — 0.2 mi
• Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) — 0.4 mi
• Forney — 0.4 mi
• 1899 Automobile Trip — 0.4 mi