McLarry Cemetery

The ground changed names as it changed hands. Joy Gough's survey says it was first the Jones Cemetery, after John R. Jones, who buried an infant son here in 1851. It became McLarry's when R. A. McLarry, a county tax assessor whose stepfather-in-law was Jones, sold the land and set aside two acres. Gough lists Polly McGarrah among the burials, and Cynthia Ann Hunn, born in 1845, whom some call the county's first white girl. She also reports that thirty to forty Black people lie in the back of the cemetery, burials the plaque does not mention.

What the plaque says

McLarry Cemetery This site was first used as a cemetery in 1851 when property owner John R. Jones buried his infant son here. The land was later donated as a public burial ground for the pioneer settlers of the surrounding Wilmeth settlement by Mary Virginia Dunn McLarry and her father Robert A. McLarry. The earliest marked graves are those of a brother and sister, Henry E. and Adella M. Hall, who died in 1870. Also buried here is J.B. Wilmeth, for whom the community was named. The site is now used by descendants of the pioneer area families. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 5.7 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.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 24 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.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 33 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Wilmeth-McKinney Homestead — 1.2 mi
• McKinney — 1.3 mi
• Ambush at McKinney — 1.6 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of McKinney — 2.1 mi