Melissa Cemetery

Two cemeteries share one entrance. In Joy Gough's survey the gate to the St. Paul Colored Cemetery sits in the northeast corner of the Melissa Cemetery, and she notes that the markers for the cemetery and for St. Paul Baptist Church both call it St. Paul's. She writes that the Sherley family, whose own burial ground this had been, sold the land for a cemetery for the area's Black residents. The Melissa Cemetery Corporation bought eleven and a third acres from L. A. Scott by a deed recorded in volume 41.

What the plaque says

Melissa Cemetery This cemetery has been the primary burial ground for members of the Melissa Community for generations. Its origin can be traced to the pioneer Sherley/Shirley family, although the specific date of its founding is unknown. The oldest graves in the cemetery are those of William M. Sherley (1856), Lewis Sherley (1867), and Albert Shirley (1879). They may have originally been buried in a family cemetery on the nearby farm of Lewis Sherley and relocated to this site when the Melissa Cemetery was formally established in 1889. Also buried in the Sherley Family Cemetery were a number of family slaves, and that site became the nearby St. Paul Cemetery. A number of Melissa residents were interred here prior to the official designation of the cemetery as a public burial ground in 1889. According to local tradition a railroad worker who died in 1872 is buried here in an unmarked grave. Many pioneer residents of Melissa are interred in this cemetery, including confederate Captain Thomas M. Scott and veterans of the Mexican War, Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The Melissa Cemetery Association cares for the historic graveyard. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 9.0 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 — 26 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 — 29 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

• Melissa School — 0.9 mi
• First Baptist Church of Melissa — 1.3 mi
• Dr. William Edward Throckmorton — 1.8 mi
• Highland Cemetery — 2.0 mi