Sowers Cemetery

The cemetery is all that remains of a town. E. D. Sowers, believed to have settled here in 1848, owned the first store, and the post office took his name in 1881. By 1884 Sowers had a church, a school, a doctor, a blacksmith, a druggist and two steam gristmill-cotton gins. The post office closed in 1905 when the population was 121, and thirty people remained in 1956. Wikipedia adds that on November 22, 1933, officers firing from a ditch near Sowers wounded Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who fled their car.

What the plaque says

Sowers Cemetery Burial plot was begun in 1868, when a woman and her daughter, whose names have been lost, were interred on the land of Seveir Smalley, a local landowner. In 1874, Edmund D. Sowers (1826 - 1909) and his wife, Freelove, donated one adjoining acre as a public burial ground. In his family lot, Sowers had an impressive monument erected, using proceeds from sale of 65 acres of his land. Additional property was donated by Otis Brown (1879 - 1958). Many pioneer settlers of this area are buried here. Cemetery is maintained by Sowers Cemetery Association. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 11 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 Museum of Art — 11 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 12 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 13 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

• Daniel Webster Gilbert, M. D. — steps away
• City of Irving — 2.1 mi
• Shady Grove Cemetery — 2.6 mi
• First Baptist Church of Irving — 2.8 mi