Greenwood Cemetery

1The Greenwood cemetery is located in the Texoma area in Bells, Texas which is about 20 minutes west of Sherman, Texas. Although its called Greenwood cemetery its commonly referred to as Jenkins cemetery because of the access of the cemetery was through a man named John J Jenkins. An interesting thing about this cemetery is that John Jenkins used his farm to build this cemetery. This cemetery is home to many of the first settlers of the Grayson and Fannin county areas.

There isn’t any indication as to who the first person was that was buried there due to inclement weather that hit the cemetery, and erased the oldest stones that were at the site. The earliest stoned dated in the cemetery was for Jas P. Montgomery, who died in 1869. About a decade and a half later, the cemetery was deeded to local citizens in the area for them to take care of the cemetery and keep it up and running. For a while they kept it up to par, and was used plenty of the people in the area, but it was until 1935 when it took a minor setback. In the fall of 1935 due to the unusual weather in the are there grass fires that grazed the area around the cemetery and the Greenwood cemetery was one of the area that was hit the most. The cemetery was damaged by the fires the left almost all graves without their wooden markers and the grass area burnt and deteriorated. After this event the owners of the cemetery felt that they wouldn’t being able to recover the cemetery back to its state before the disaster and left it alone. And for decades later the cemetery was left neglected and unattended and that’s how its been now up until present day.

2As for the significance of this grave there are many notable people that are buried here. One of the people that are buried here are the early settlers that built and established area to be known as Fannin County and Grayson county. The problem is that they are known to be buried here because the sons and daughters of the men that established these counties still live here today but due to the neglect of the graves they are able to identify where they are and the other people that were buried here as well. There are also believed to be at least 12 Confederate soldiers that died during the civil war to be buried here as well, but the only way that they are identified as to being buried here is because of their children that stay in the Grayson county area. At the cemetery there isn’t any indication of them being buried here that is why there has been many efforts by the people in the town to try to restore this area and give the recognition to the soldiers that bravely fought in the war

1 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth256781/?q=greenwood%20cemetery

2 https://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/Effort-to-restore-historic-Grayson-County-cemetery-191502241.html