Thomas Easter Cemetery

The schoolhouse beside this cemetery belonged to a larger story. The Southlake Historical Society's marker page says Easter, later called Union, was one of several one-room schools serving the area in the late 1800s, along with White's Chapel and Sams. In 1917 Tarrant County commissioners combined them into Common School District No. 99, later named for county school superintendent B. E. Carroll. Pupils kept attending their separate buildings until a central brick school opened in 1919. It began with three teachers for 97 students in nine grades.

What the plaque says

Thomas Easter Cemetery Virginia native Thomas Easter, born about 1823, migrated to Texas and settled in Tarrant County by 1848. Easter patented a 640-acre tract of land in the northeast corner of the county. A portion of this land was used as a cemetery upon his death in 1862. His wife Charity Easter, born about 1820, was buried here in the early 1880s. Another known burial is that of early settler Hardin West (b. 1809), who died on March 10, 1881. The Cemetery contains several unmarked graves. The Easter Schoolhouse stood beside the burial ground during the 19th Century. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — 17 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 18 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 19 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 20 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.

More markers nearby

• Grapevine — 1.6 mi
• First Baptist Church of Grapevine — 1.8 mi
• Grapevine Cemetery — 2.1 mi
• White's Chapel United Methodist Church — 2.5 mi