Historical Marker located in Tarrant County in the American West South Central
Hawkins Cemetery
5301 NB Highway 287 Access Road/5211 El Rancho Drive, Arlington, Texas
Phone: 817–360–3217
Erected: 2015
This was my first official recorded trip to a historical marker. This place was chosen due to the proximity of the location to my home. The day was cold which was unlike for Texas and the cemetery was empty for my cameraman and me. I didn’t expect much from cemeteries especially those surrounded by suburbs but surprisingly enough, there is a fantastic amount of history located in these graves. In this article, I will be going over some of the histories of Hawkins Cemetery.
Points Of Interest
Historical Marker #18475 Cemetery ID #: TR-C113 Inscription: Named for Harvey Hawkins (1804–1869), a pioneer settler who came to Texas from Tennessee and first settled in Rusk County, the Hawkins Cemetery is the final resting place for families of the Tate Springs community. In 1848, Hawkins married Mary Ann Elizabeth (Elliott) Hitt Turner (1817–1868) and they later traveled by wagon to what would become Tarrant County. A preemptive land grant was issued to Hawkins for 160 acres in Tarrant County by Sam Houston, governor of the State of Texas, in January 1860.
The cemetery began as a family plot located in the center of the property where the Hawkins couple and their children are buried. According to legend, a slave named Poly Penn was the first burial. No gravestone has been found but the location was marked on an early map. The earliest marked gravesite is that of Mary Hawkins in 1868. Rebekah Hawkins, Mary’s daughter, married Jason Bryant Little before moving with her family to Tarrant County and settled near the Hawkins family. After Jason returned from fighting in the Civil War, they opened an elementary school. Their home was used as a stage coach stop on the Star Mail Route from Johnson Station, Texas to Fort Worth. A large arched monument stands at the north end of the cemetery, marking the gravesites of Rebekah, Jason and their families.
In 1890, now property owner George W. Kee sold the cemetery grounds to the community for use as a public burial ground. The Kee family is buried on the norther section of the cemetery. Additional acreage was acquired in 1919 from the Edwards and Tunnell families. Members of the community established a Cemetery Association in 1949 to maintain the cemetery and its records. Hawkins Cemetery chronicles the pioneer families that settled the area in the mid-1800s.
Historic Texas Cemetery — 2015
Marker is property of the State of Texas
People of Interest
The original stones for Harvey Hawkins were lost and Mary and Charles Hawkin’s stones deteriorated. These three stones were recently replaced with granite markers by Betty Bridgewater and Connie Burleson, both descendants of the Hawkins family, who also provided this history of the Hawkins family to the cemetery.
George W. Kee became the later owner of the cemetery and sold the one-half acre cemetery in 1890 to the community for, “fifty dollars for use as a public burying place as found in deed records of Tarrant County, Texas in 1895. The Kee family is buried near the Hawkins family on the ridge in the northern section of the cemetery.”
Poly Penn was a slave girl and was said to be the first to be buried in the cemetery several yards south of the Hawkins family plot. There is no gravestone found but her grave location on the oldest maps of the cemetery was labeled as ‘Poly Penn Coll’.
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