Pleasant Mound "Public" Cemetery

James J. Beeman left a memoir, written at Lampasas in December 1886. He set out from Illinois in September 1840 but, by his account, reached the White Rock bottom only on April 4, 1842, after a stay at Bird's Fort. About May he cut a road through the timber to Dallas, with King S. Custer driving the oxen, and claimed the first wagon there. His party named Turtle Creek after catching a large turtle. He had married Sarah Crawford in Illinois in 1836. He went to California in 1848, returned in 1850, and moved to Parker County in 1854.

What the plaque says

Pleasant Mound "Public" Cemetery In 1640-acre survey of James Jackson Beeman (1816-88), uncle by marriage of John Neely Bryan, first settler in Dallas. Beeman came here from Illinois in 1840, helped cut first road in Trinity bottoms; name Turtle Creek, 1841; and plat city of Dallas, 1842. On March 8, 1848, he buried his wife Sarah Crawford Beeman on northeast corner of his land, and later allowed neighbors to bury their dead here. Cemetery's first (1887) trustees were J. W. Miller, James Pruitt, and J. H. Shannon. Pioneers buried here set the course for greatness of Dallas. Marker Donated By: Mildred Boone (Mrs. Joel) Haden, great- granddaughter of Sarah Crawford Beeman, first person buried in this cemetery, and by the Ada Bruton Garden Club of Dallas. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 4.7 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 — 4.9 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 6.1 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 7.0 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• Pleasant Mound Cemetery — steps away
• Pleasant Mound Methodist Church — 1.0 mi
• Site of Scyene Meeting Place — 1.4 mi
• W.W. Glover Cemetery — 1.5 mi