180 years ago, on July 4th, 1846, citizens gathered on John McGarrah’s settlement of Buckner, at the time just a patch of Collin County prairie, to elect their first officials. How freaking patriotic is that? This was our first county seat. A scant two years later, though, in 1848, the county seat moved to McKinney due to a state requirement, and Buckner itself faded into the surrounding land. The Old Buckner Cemetery is one of the only non-archival reminders of the origins of Collin County.
Recently, I had the privilege of attending the rededication of the Old Buckner Cemetery following its restoration. It’s easy for history like this to be lost, and it might have been but for the efforts of the Old Buckner Cemetery Association.
Candace Fountoulakis is the founding president of the Old Buckner Cemetery Association, and the cornerstone of the years of quiet, tierless work that happened to enable this restoration. Ashley Davis Hamilton, the current association president and an 8th-generation Texan, said it best in her remarks: this was “a masterclass in developer-historian partnership.”
She’s right.
Eric Seitz of The Seitz Group, alongside Joseph Levings, did something developers rarely get credit for: he treated the cemetery ground as something to be honored, not engineered around. The association volunteers, Nan, Tommy, Leo, Agustin, LaCinda, Carolyn, and Candace, each carried a piece of the project forward.
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Collin McKinney Chapter, awarded the cemetery a Historic Site of the Republic of Texas medallion, and The Daughters of the American Revolution, Mary Shirley McGuire Chapter, lovingly restored the Texas Historical Commission markers. Cyrious Metalworks built the new iron fence. Eagle Scout Jace Hill constructed two remembrance benches from pieces of the old gate. I love this kind of historical symbolism, made more meaningful because this young man wrote himself into the history of the place that just became part of his own history. McKinney Troops 909 and 406 served the ceremony. LaCinda Russell sang the National Anthem. And county historian Joy Gough secured the original Historic Texas Cemetery medallion back in 2011.
None of this happens by accident.
In 1988, when the original historical marker was placed, historian Helen Hall wrote that “where 10 years ago fat herefords grazed the prairie grasses at the site of Buckner, now ‘progress’ has brought all kinds of things… This makes it important that this historic little cemetery not be lost in the shuffle.”
37 years later, it wasn’t. Because people who could’ve let it go didn’t.
That’s what real stewardship looks like.
We the People didn’t just inherit a county. We inherited a responsibility to remember how it got here, who broke the ground, who buried their dead in it, who gathered on July 4th to elect their first officials and put self-governance into practice when Texas had just been admitted to the U.S. as a state, and Collin County was barely a name on a map.
Preserving what makes our community great means knowing where we came from and refusing to let it disappear while we continually work to distill and enhance what makes us great as we modernize. The Old Buckner Cemetery, in a very real way, represents hallowed ground for self-governance in Collin County. Thanks to the Old Buckner Cemetery Association, a small army of volunteers made sure it’ll stay that way.
To Candace, Ashley, Eric, and everyone who made this happen: thank you. You did something that matters far longer than any of us will be around to measure it.
Support the Old Buckner Cemetery Association
