Fort Worth, Tarrant County
In 1861 Benjamin Patton Ayres (ca. 1801-62) and his wife, Emily (Cozart) (ca. 1811-63), bought a 320-acre farm and set aside two acres on this hillside as a family cemetery. Ayres, who had served as the second Tarrant County clerk and who helped organize the Fort Worth First Christian Church, was the first buried here. An unknown number of graves, which lie outside the fenced family plot, include victims of spring fevers and Trinity River floods. None of their fieldstones have survived, but the Ayres Cemetery remains as a symbol of the area's early settlers. (1984)