Bellah Cemetery

These are some of the graves at the Carr's farm near Point (Rains County), which is about 60m east of Dallas, Tx. My wife and I took some pictures which you'll see below. Although we personally have little interest in genealogy, we thought documenting it was the right thing to do.

As we have not lived on the land in many years, the cemetery is overgrown and in poor repair. It was always copperhead funland so I carry a shotgun in that area. There is a low gate on the west side of the roughly 1-acre plot. The graves are huddled in the northwest corner, and all but the slab markers face east.

Questions

  1. Does the "he served others" phrase have any special meaning? It's on two markers in this installation.
  2. Can anybody nail down the date of the markers by looking at their style? (ie are they period or later replacements?)

Some history

As remembered by my father.
The legal name of the cemetery is the Bellah Cemetery. Some years there was and older fellow in the Point area who was among the last surviving kin of the folks buried in the cemetery. His name was Doe (nickname I think) Bellah.

It seems that many of the folks who have early dates on their gravestones were the early settlers of the area. The early settlers came to the area in late winter or early spring when there was running water in Lake Fork Creek. (At that the creek bed was not deep at all. Nothing like it is now. Likely only two to three feet deep and not eroded as it is now.) When they arrived, they stayed, not realizing that the creek was not a year round source of water. In the heat of summer the creek dried up leaving only the deeper pools of stagnate water which caused many of them to die of diphtheria. This was one reason so many of them died so young.

The land in that area is underlied with heavy tight clays which do not allow the water to percolate through and therefore does not afford water wells. I once had a seismic survey crew drill 275 feet deep in the area where the old cistern was and it was dry as a bone.

In the cemetery the used to be a small church near the gate. I searched the place with my metal detector a few times but never found anything. I did find a few artifacts near the Hayes homesite. Nothing of any importance. Parts of broken cast iron cookware, a horseshoe, nails. I did not keep any of them, just left them on the ground there.

The old road from Point through that area went past Lone Star cemetery and up through the bottom passing just west of Bellah cemetery and passing the Stapleton's house. I suppose it went on to Lone Oak from there, or perhaps to Greenville. That would seem to indicate that folks used the road to gather at the church there at Bellah.

There is another cemetery about 2-3 miles east from there near Turkey Creek that is about the same age and condition. The early folks there suffered the same fate as those in Bellah.

Disclaimer

Please note that the black&white pics above were taken by my father, Harold L. Carr, and are copyright to him. So please don't use them without permission. The color (digital) pics were taken by me and you have my permission to use them in any non-profit activities. They were shot on the lowest-quality mode (high compression, 640x480) of an Olympus D-340R.

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