William Sachse Cemetery

The town of Sachse began with a trade. According to the Handbook of Texas, William Sachse gave right-of-way to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway in 1886 in exchange for naming the station for him. The post office opened that year as Saxie, a spelling changed to Sachse in 1892. The Handbook says the name honors Sachse and his wife Elizabeth Straly Sachse, a widow whose 320-acre Peters colony grant was patented in 1846. Sachse became the twenty-fifth incorporated town in Dallas County in April 1956.

What the plaque says

William Sachse Cemetery William Sachse, a native of Prussia, arrived in nearby Collin County in 1845 as a Peters colonist. He became a successful businessman, rancher, and trader, and participated in several cattle drives to Kansas. His business successes over time allowed him to acquire more than 5000 acres of land in Collin and Dallas Counties. In 1886, Sachse gave some of this land to the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad for a railway line and townsite. The community that grew up around the railroad was named Sachse in his honor. Sachse moved his family to the new town and soon set aside two acres of land for a church and this cemetery. The graveyard has been used throughout its history as a public burial ground. The oldest marked grave, that of William Sachse, is dated 1899. Sachse's second wife, Martha (Frost), a number of their descendants, as well as many early settlers and their descendants also are buried here. Some of the family names recorded here are Salmon, Herring, Ingram, House, Harper, and Brand. The William Sachse Cemetery, with its ties to early settlement in this part of the state, is an important reminder of the area's heritage. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 9.1 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 12 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Fair Park — 17 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 — 17 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

• Murphy Community — 2.9 mi
• Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Rowlett — 3.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Murphy — 3.7 mi
• McMillen Cemetery — 3.7 mi