I followed my GPS’s directions to Lonesome Dove Cemetery, but I really didn’t need it to guide me, as this wasn’t my first visit to the graveyard. During my research on the history of the Cross Timbers region, I had read quite a bit about the Dove community and was therefore familiar with the location.

The 1843 Bird’s Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and several Native American tribes opened the area to new immigrants. In the ensuing years, about 35 related families arrived from Platte County, Missouri, and settlers from other parts of the United States migrated to this region to claim land offered by the Peters Colony. They settled along Denton Creek south near present-day Grapevine, and west near what is now Roanoke. In February of 1846, area residents organized the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church. In 1847, members built a long log structure approximately four miles northwest of Grapevine in the Eastern Cross Timbers. The Lonesome Dove School also began about that time, and the Rev. John Allen Freeman served as schoolteacher as well as church pastor for ten years.

In 1849, the state legislature created Tarrant County, with Birdville as the county seat, and the U.S. Army established Fort Worth as a frontier fort. By 1870, the small village of Dove had a general store and a post office operated at the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads. The community became a farming center for cotton, melon, and dairy production. Included as part of the community were Lonesome Dove Cemetery just north of the church site, the Dove Branch swimming hole, used for recreation as well as baptisms, and Dove School, which was closed in 1919 when Carroll School was built in the newly-named Carroll Common School District.

In 1952, the federal government completed Lake Grapevine, which forced a number of families to relocate from the northern portion of the Dove Community to other parts of Texas. In 1979, the city of Southlake annexed Dove, but evidence of the early community remains.

The Whites Chapel Cemetery is one of the oldest surviving landmarks in modern-day Southlake, Texas. According to local lore this cemetery began around 1851 when a child died on a wagon train that was traveling through the region. The child is buried here in an unmarked grave. The oldest documented death took place in 1872 with the burial of the infant Amy A. Marr. 

The cemetery’s earliest readable birth date on a headstone is of Mrs. E. B. Torian. She was born in Halifax County, Virginia, in 1796 and was buried March 27, 1886. Most of the graves in this pioneer cemetery are unmarked, or marked only with fieldstones. Laid to rest here is the former state legislator Elihu Newton (1845-1925), who served in the 20th and 23rd Texas legislatures, as well as veterans of the Civil War. The cemetery is cared for by the White’s Chapel Cemetery Association. 

Side note: Notice that there is no apostrophe in the name that graces the entrance to Whites Chapel Cemetery.