Trinity Farms/Rancho Grande Cemetery

Much of what is known about the graves comes from surveys. The Dallas Genealogical Society surveyed the cemetery in 1992, and Ed Millis resurveyed it, publishing the history, burial transcription and death certificate information in 2004. Jay Sowell mapped the marked graves and Millis the unmarked ones. Two fenced sections hold the dead, Hispanic on the east and African American on the west, matching the farm's separate schools. Descendants of the families care for the ground. The society posted a scanned copy of Millis's book online.

What the plaque says

Trinity Farms/Rancho Grande Cemetery This cemetery represents the last remaining physical reminder of the community of people who worked and lived on a vast commercial farm here known as the Dallas County Trinity Farms from about 1915 to 1946. The farm covered about 3,000 acres of land which had been farmed for many years. Dallas County Trinity Farms was one of several large farms owned by E. P. Harwell of Tulsa, Oklahoma, C. H. Clark of Wichita Falls, Texas, and T. H. Harbin of Waxahachie, Texas. The Trinity Farms Company provided housing, schools, and a general store/commissary for use by the farm laborers and their families. Farm laborers consisted mostly of Mexican citizens, many of whom arrived during the Mexican Revolution, and a sizable number of African Americans. Harbin lived in a large white ranch house and operated the farm which was also known as Rancho Grande. The earliest recorded burials occurred in the early 1920s. The children of Hispanics and African Americans who worked on the farm attended separate schools. Similarly, the cemetery contains separate sections for Hispanics and African Americans. The last burial occurred in the early 1940s. The cemetery is maintained by descendants of the families interred here. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 3.4 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 — 3.4 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 — 4.6 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 — 5.5 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

• Cedar Springs — 1.7 mi
• Oath of Office of President Johnson — 1.9 mi
• Love Field — 1.9 mi
• Texas' First Airmail and Passenger Service — 1.9 mi