Daniel Family Cemetery Plaque

Hidden behind a veil of shrubbery, along Airline Road, lies the Daniel Family Cemetery Plaque. This plaque commemorates a family whose roots intertwine with the very fabric of Dallas. Frances Sims Daniel arrived in Texas in 1849, just four years after Texas joined the United States. She brought her six children and her sister, Mrs. Nancy Harlan, from Alabama to this untamed land. Frances, widowed just a year prior, invested her savings wisely. She bought 640 acres of land near what is now Snider Plaza for a mere 50 cents an acre. This was only the beginning of her land acquisitions. She eventually owned property on both sides of the Trinity River. The Daniel Family Cemetery began in 1850 in what was then a young orchard behind Frances’s house. It started with the burial of “Old Frank”, one of the enslaved people who had accompanied the family from Alabama. The cemetery holds a tragic record etched in stone. Tiny tombstones mark the graves of infants lost too soon. Isabella, Frances’s daughter, died in 1851. She was buried in the southeast corner of the orchard, followed by her infant daughter in 1860. Frances’s sister, Mrs. Harlan, also found her final resting place there in 1850. The cemetery grew, reflecting the joys and sorrows of the Daniel family. Births, marriages, and deaths are all chronicled on the weathered stones. Frances Sims Daniel, the matriarch, passed away at the young age of 57. The Daniel Family Cemetery Plaque, placed here in 1988, reminds us of their legacy. It’s a testament to a family who braved the frontier and helped shape the history of Dallas. They rest here, amidst the whispers of the past, beneath the Texas sky.