White Rock Cemetery, Garden of Memories

White Rock Cemetery, Garden of Memories. . , From its first recorded burial, this has been the burial ground for many of Dallas County's prominent white and African American families. In about 1850, Captain William C. McKamy, his wife, Rachel, and their family moved here from Tennessee. Their infant daughter was the first white burial in the cemetery in 1852. In 1855, the land was transferred to Captain Preston Witt, who with his brother, Wade H. Witt, built a mill near Preston Road and White Rock Creek. In 1858, Samuel McGregor Scott bought the land and the cemetery became known as Scott Cemetery, with three Scott family burials., Following Emancipation in 1865, Freedman's towns began to form around Dallas, including the upper and lower White Rock communities where many freedmen owned land by the 1870s. In the early 1870s, George Coit, a formerly enslaved man who owned farmland nearby, purchased a small piece of land adjacent to the Scott Cemetery. He and his wife, Rosie, buried their infant son here in 1873 and their infant daughter in 1875. In 1878, Coit, also a founder and trustee of White Rock Chapel C.M.E Church, bought another half acre from the Scotts for his own and other African American families, forming the White Rock Union Colored Graveyard. In 1889, cemetery trustees bought another acre of land, and for the next century, the cemetery was used by African American families in Upper and Lower White Rock and the surrounding freedman's towns., In 1972, the successor trustees of the White Rock Union Graveyard renamed it White Rock Cemetery, Garden of Memories, comprising both the original Scott Cemetery and the White Rock Union Colored Graveyard. Many of Dallas' earliest African American settlers and most influential pioneer families are buried here, including Anderson and Eliza Bonner, George and Rosa Coit, Henry Keller, George Wells and Taylor Tarpley. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2020.