Shiloh Cemetery

Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church began in the open air. The Handbook of Texas says services were held under a brush arbor until 1853, when a log cabin was built as church and schoolhouse, and a frame church was finished in 1872. It credits the Rev. Finis E. King with starting the church in 1847; the Red Oak entry instead says James E. Patton founded it on July 25, 1847. The plaque names both King and Patton as people tied to the church and cemetery. Frame, log and arbor mark the congregation's three stages.

What the plaque says

Shiloh Cemetery Burials in this cemetery began with Peters Colony pioneers who founded Ovilla in 1844. The earliest marked grave is that of Mary C. Patton, wife of elder James E. Patton, who died on August 14, 1851. The Pattons were among the original settlers of Ovilla. James S. and Martha Berry and the Rev. Finis E. King formally deeded land for the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian church and cemetery. Tombstones record the graves of a number of pastors who served the Shiloh church and many veterans of the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Korea. Buried here also are members of fraternal lodges and two 19th-century Ovilla postmasters. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 9.0 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 9.5 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 19 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Ovilla — 0.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Ovilla — 0.9 mi
• Parsons' Cavalry C.S.A. — 4.6 mi
• Ellis County — 4.6 mi