This information was generated by ChatGPT.com on July 20. 2026.
Honey Springs Cemetery, now officially known as Bulova/Homecoming Cemetery, is the only surviving and formally recognized historic cemetery directly associated with the Joppa community. Historically, the property contained adjoining Honey Springs and Free Will Baptist cemetery sections. Numerous graves are unmarked, and descendant family papers identify burials no longer represented by readable stones. Joppa descendants also preserve an oral tradition of a separate community burial ground within Joppa, possibly affected by later park or trail construction, but its boundaries and relationship to Honey Springs have not yet been conclusively established.
Findings
Based on currently available online sources, I can identify two burial-ground traditions associated with Joppa, but only one surviving, officially documented cemetery:
- Honey Springs Cemetery, now officially called Bulova/Homecoming Cemetery — a surviving cemetery at 5119 Bulova Street, immediately west of the historic Joppa community.
- The lost or suspected Joppa community burial ground — remembered by descendant families as having been located within Joppa itself, possibly in or near land later developed with walking paths and park improvements. Its precise boundaries and even its formal name have not been established.
I did not find reliable documentation of additional named Miller, Hines, Smiler, or other family cemeteries within Joppa. Some references to “family burial grounds” appear to describe family sections or clusters of graves within the two sites above rather than legally separate cemeteries.
1. Honey Springs / Free Will Baptist / Homecoming Cemetery
Identity and location
The cemetery is currently maintained by Dallas Park and Recreation as Bulova Homecoming Cemetery, a special-use park established in 1973. Its reported address is 5119 Bulova Street, Dallas, at Bulova Street and Cotton Lane.
The various names do not necessarily refer to different locations. Dallas Municipal Archives records explain that the site originally consisted of two adjoining cemeteries:
- Free Will Baptist Cemetery
- Honey Springs Cemetery
Together they became known as:
- Coming Home Community Cemetery
- Homecoming Cemetery
- Honey Springs Township Cemetery
- Bulova Cemetery
- Bulova/Homecoming Cemetery
The municipal cemetery files associate all of these names with Dallas Block or Abstract 6097.
Thus, what may look like several cemeteries in older records is probably a single surviving cemetery complex containing two historically distinct sections.
Current condition
The cemetery still exists and is fenced. Dallas Park and Recreation reportedly began maintaining it in 1973 and installed fencing, a gate, and masonry improvements. City sources differ on whether the major fence work occurred in 1992 or 2004, possibly reflecting separate improvement projects.
The cemetery contains numerous depressions, damaged markers and unmarked graves. A 1993 inventory reportedly described several hundred graves, many unmarked or represented by broken markers.
People documented as buried there
A 1999 descendant-led marker inventory recorded the following readable stones:
| Person | Information preserved |
|---|---|
| Ralph Curry | Private, 165th Depot Brigade; died June 13, 1942 |
| Earl Hines | 1901–1946 |
| Charlie Rand | Date unclear in the transcription |
| Jim Floyd | March 2, 1867–November 15, 1914 |
| Louis or Louie Wright | Private, 165th Depot Brigade; died December 24, 1938 |
| John Mitchell | Born about 1894; stone reportedly says age 50 |
| Ambrose Moore | Died April 7, 1907; age 40 |
| Nathan McGee | Died 1937 |
| Mary Mitchell | 1866–1946 |
| Nannie Moore | Wife of Ambrose Moore |
| Lucille Myers Brown | 1903–1943 |
| A. Conner | Stone reportedly dated 1899; age 39 |
| John Smith | Son of Ben and Emma Smith; born 1873 |
| Annie Mae King | 1889–1963 |
| Joshua Green | Dates associated with 1901 |
| Cordelia Green | Dates associated with 1903 |
| Annie Bowie | 1894–1939, although the transcription may combine two stones |
| Jessie Hawkins | Wife of Joseph Hawkins |
| Uncertain Masonic/IOOF marker | Died 1891, age 60; name not clearly transcribed |
| Blanch Rand | Dates not supplied |
The online transcription is imperfect and occasionally runs adjacent stones together, so each entry should be checked against the original photographs or inventory sheets before publication.
Additional burials documented through family and church records
Papers supplied by Joppa descendant Alice Brown, together with funeral records from True Light Baptist Church, identify additional people whose graves may now be unmarked:
- Essie Smiler Cooksie, born September 6, 1890; died December 26, 1966
- Annie Armstrong King, born about 1888; buried January 23, 1963
- Oscar King, died September 6, 1958
- Jessie Smiler Hawkins, born September 15, 1894; died November 4, 1965
- Eddie Smiler, born February 18, 1899; died June 22, 1952
The documents connect these people to the extended Nelson and Tennie Smiler family, including relatives Blanch Rand, Willie Wells, Elnora Woods, Mattie Skinner and Gano Smith.
The source explicitly states that comparison of the family papers with the surviving headstones showed that many documented burials no longer had readable markers. It also cautions that Alice Brown’s papers represented only one family and that other family burial records probably existed.
Other people associated with disappearing Joppa graves
Historian Donald Payton and Joppa descendants publicly identified the following people as examples of early residents or descendants whose burial places were endangered or no longer visible:
- Oscar Miller
- Eva Hines
- Henry Miller
The news report does not make completely clear whether all three were buried inside the present Honey Springs boundary or at the suspected lost Joppa burial ground. They should therefore be listed as associated with the disputed or disappearing Joppa burial landscape, not definitively assigned to Honey Springs without further evidence.
2. Lost or suspected Joppa community burial ground
What descendants report
Joppa descendants Shalondria Galimore and Claudia Fowler stated that successive generations of their families had maintained that a cemetery once existed within the Joppa community. They believed portions of the burial area may have been overlooked or covered during construction of walking paths and park improvements.
Their documentation appears to rest primarily on:
- multigenerational oral history;
- family knowledge of where graves or markers once stood;
- memories or photographs of markers;
- physical evidence such as broken stones;
- associations with named early Joppa families.
This is meaningful historical evidence, but it has not yet been converted into a completed archaeological cemetery survey.
Possible relocation to Honey Springs
Some residents believed graves from the original Joppa burial ground had once been moved to Honey Springs. In 2018, however, the City of Dallas said it could find no municipal record documenting such a relocation. The city recommended a more detailed open-records search and noted that land north of Honey Springs was privately owned.
Consequently, three possibilities remain:
- graves were moved without surviving municipal documentation;
- some graves remain beneath later development;
- oral tradition has conflated the original Free Will Baptist and Honey Springs sections with a separate Joppa cemetery.
At present, none of these explanations has been conclusively proved.
Broken gravestones
Residents reported a collection or pile of broken and defaced tombstones near Honey Springs. The 2018 City of Dallas correspondence confirms that this allegation was specifically raised with city officials, although the city’s response did not determine where the stones originated or whether they represented relocated graves.
The broken markers are particularly important because their inscriptions, stone types and original locations could potentially distinguish:
- stones displaced from within Honey Springs;
- stones from the Free Will Baptist section;
- stones removed from a separate Joppa burial ground.
I found no online evidence that this analysis has been completed.
Available records and maps
Dallas Municipal Archives — highest-priority collection
The most important surviving record group is:
Public Works Survey Division Cemetery Files, 1887–2005, Collection 2005-005
The collection contains:
- cemetery survey documents;
- boundary and ownership records;
- notes;
- maps;
- photographs;
- folded landscaping plans;
- material copied from Dallas County Clerk records.
The collection has separate folders for:
- Free Will Baptist Cemetery — Box 4, Folder 4
- Homecoming Cemetery — Box 5, Folder 10
- Honey Springs Cemetery — Box 6, Folder 1
This division could be crucial for determining whether the two sections had different boundaries and burial populations.
The archives are at Dallas City Hall and can be contacted through the Dallas Municipal Archives. The collection is not fully digitized.
Dallas Park and Recreation records
A second relevant record group is:
Dallas Department of Park and Recreation General Subject Files, Collection 1995-023
The collection contains a folder titled:
Bulova–Homecoming–Honey Springs, Box 14, Folder 15.
The broader collection includes correspondence, reports, maps, photographs, plans and drawings relating to park acquisition and maintenance.
Frances James Cemetery Files
The Dallas Municipal Archives also holds the Frances James Cemetery Files Collection, 2019-010, which includes:
- Honey Springs 1 — Homecoming binder
- Honey Springs 2 — loose pages
These files may contain the original cemetery inventory, descendant correspondence, marker transcriptions and source notes used in Frances James’s cemetery research.
Town of Honey Springs records
The Municipal Archives holds:
Town of Honey Springs, 1937–1947, Collection 1991-114
Although this is not strictly a cemetery collection, it may contain plats, town records or property information establishing the relationship among Honey Springs, the cemetery, the railroad and later Joppa development.
Online burial indexes
Online sources include:
- Dallas County Pioneer Association’s Honey Springs history and 1999 marker inventory;
- Find a Grave’s Honey Springs Cemetery memorial collection;
- older Dallas County cemetery inventories compiled by local genealogists.
These are valuable finding aids, but memorials created from family knowledge should be distinguished from graves confirmed by surviving stones or original burial documents.
Where unmarked graves have been documented
The strongest existing documentation falls into three categories:
Inside Honey Springs/Homecoming
Unmarked graves are supported by:
- visible grave depressions;
- discrepancy between family burial records and surviving stones;
- the 1993 cemetery inventory;
- the 1999 Payton family headstone inventory;
- photographs held by Donald Payton;
- Alice Brown’s Smiler-family papers;
- True Light Baptist Church funeral information.
This is the best-documented concentration of unmarked graves.
Near or north of Honey Springs
The land immediately north of the city-maintained cemetery was identified by the city as private property in 2018. Residents also reported broken markers in an area near the cemetery. This land deserves separate deed, survey and archaeological investigation because the official fence may not correspond exactly to the historic burial limits.
Within the Joppa community or preserve area
Galimore and Fowler documented a descendant tradition that graves once existed in an area later crossed or covered by paths and park development. As of the latest material I located, this claim had not been verified by ground-penetrating radar, archaeological excavation or a publicly released cemetery delineation survey.
