Confederate Cemetery
- LOCATION: Cemetery is located at northwest corner of Electra Street and Reed Lane
- MAPSCO: 46Y
- GPS: 32.45.43.959 N, 96.45.09.984 W
- On DGS Cemetery Map
- On Google Maps
- On Findagrave
The Old Confederate Cemetery, located on Electra and Reed Streets, southeast of the larger Oakland Cemetery, contains the graves of Confederate War veterans and some of their family members. It is fully fenced, gated, but not locked. The City of Dallas Park Department maintains the cemetery. There is a Confederate monument in the center containing the names of many buried in the cemetery, as well as burial location information.
According to the 1955 handwritten history of the Dallas Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the idea for a Confederate cemetery began when an old confederate who passed away didn’t have a burial plot.
The history says that General W. L. Cabell and his daughter, Mrs. Katie Cabell Currie Muse, provided for the burial. The actual land is in the Lagow survey where, in 1901, J. A. Crawford and his wife Mattie sold six acres adjacent to Oakland Cemetery to Dallas County. In 1904, the county set aside .75 acres of the tract for the burial of Ex-Confederate soldiers “under the direction and the control of Sterling Price Camp [United Confederate Veterans] No. 31.” In 1936 the county deeded the cemetery to the city of Dallas.
The cemetery has been transcribed several times. The first known listing was in 1948 by Willie Flowers Carlisle. In 1961 William Conger and his students at Sunset High School recorded the visible markers and created a map. Shari L. Degan, Donald Whitsitt, Harold Williams, Columbus Strength family, and the Leslie S. Talifaferro family created a new listing in 2000 adding individuals and their known military and pension information (see the Dallas Journal, Vol. 46, 2000, page 57).
In 2014 Barbara Ware and Suzan Younger updated the cemetery transcription and prepared it for the DGS cemetery database using previous DGS sources, obituaries and death notices from the Dallas Morning News, death certificates and a survey of currently existing tombstones. The burial locations of those not noted on the center marker have been added based on the survey.
SOURCES
- Mrs. J. P. Greenwood, “History of Dallas Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy and Confederate Cemetery.” MA 87.8 Box 2 Folder 1, Confederate Veterans Collection, Texas/Dallas History Department, Dallas Public Library, c1955
- Willie Flowers Carlisle. “Confederate Cemetery.” Old Cemeteries of Dallas County. Dallas, 1948, page 28
- W. R. Conger, et. al, Confederate Cemetery, Dallas, Texas, Dallas, Texas, 1961
- Dallas County, Texas Deed Book 265, Page 208 as cited in W. R. Conger, et. al, Confederate Cemetery, Dallas, Texas, Dallas, Texas, 1961
- Minutes, Commissioner’s Court of Dallas County, Texas, Vol. 25, page 150 as cited in W. R. Conger, et. al
- Minutes, Commissioner’s Court of Dallas County, Texas, Vol. 410, page 470 as cited in W. R. Conger, et. al
- Shari Degan, Donald Whitsitt, Harold Williams, Columbus Strength family, and the Leslie S. Taliaferro family. “The Old Confederate Cemetery.” The Dallas Journal, Vol. 46, 2000, page 57
More Information
- Confederate Cemetery, Dallas, Texas DGS Newsletter, Volume 7, Number 4, December 1961, Page 1
- Early Dallas County Cemetery Records, from Records Collected by Mrs. Geo. F. Carlisle: The Quarterly, Volume 15, Number 2, June 1969
- The Old Confederate Cemetery “Gone But Not Forgotten” Abstracted by Shari L. Degan, Donald Whitsitt, Harold Williams, Columbus Strength family, and the Leslie S. Talifaferro family: The Dallas Journal: Volume XLVI, June 2000
