Plano Mutual Cemetery

The Foreman family's land was a small industrial site before it was a burial ground. Joy Gough writes that William Foreman's family, who came around 1850, ran a gristmill, a distillery, a sawmill and a cooperage on a small stream nearby; the plaque spells the name Forman. William Foreman I was buried here in 1856. A deed of 1907 divided the cemetery into sections for the Masons, the Odd Fellows, the Woodmen of the World, the Knights of Pythias and the Mutual Cemetery Association, though those divisions are no longer visible on the ground.

What the plaque says

Plano Mutual Cemetery Among the earliest graveyards in Collin county, this cemetery traces its beginnings to 1852 when Dr. Lillie was buried on land belonging to his uncle William Forman. A Kentucky native, Forman came to Texas about 1850 and bought 640 acres in 1851 from Sanford Beck. Lillie's death prompted a meeting of pioneer settlers to decide the location of a graveyard. The owners of four sections of land that converged together promised equal portions for the cemetery. However, most of the earliest graves are located on Forman land. By the 1870s the Forman Family Cemetery was combined with cemetery tracts purchased by the local Masonic and Odd Fellows' lodges. A group of local women organized the Ladies Mutual Cemetery Association in the 1890s to maintain the site. They beautified the grounds, provided a pavilion and doubled the size of the cemetery during their nearly 40 years tenure. By 1907 adjoining tracts of land were bought by the Mutual Cemetery Association, Woodmen of the World and Knights of Pythias organizations. The Plano Mutual Cemetery Association was formed in 1928 and continues service to the site. Buried here are many early pioneers and their descendants, war veterans, and elected officials. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 10 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 — 15 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 — 18 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

• First Baptist Church of Plano — 0.8 mi
• First Christian Church of Plano — 1.2 mi
• Shiloh Baptist Church — 1.2 mi
• Plano Cemetery — 1.3 mi