Sometime in the 1950’s, Robert Cole wrote an account of Warren Ferris and the Ferris Cemetery. He placed this account, along with a sketch of the Ferris home place, at the Dallas Historical Society at the Hall of State in Fair Park (A.58.41).
While there are some errors in fact, Cole’s account is valuable for its first hand observations, stories from his father William Rapply Cole who probably knew Ferris, and information from Ferris’s adult children and grandchildren who came to visit the cemetery. Cole apparently utilized the biographical sketch in Ferris’s Life In the Rocky Mountains when discussing Ferris’s life before coming to Dallas.
Cole describes Ferris’s surveys in Dallas County - the Grigsby survey (downtown Dallas), Lagow survey (Fair Park), Jones survey (Tennison Park), and Lovejoy survey (Forest Hills) and how Ferris and his second wife Fanny, took up land on Lovejoy survey #4 along White Rock Creek. “On this land they built a comfortable home, raised a large family…He doing some surveying, farming and [raising] livestock. He liked to read and had a room full of books (so a granddaughter says)”.
“They gave a small plot of land to the community to be used for a burial ground, here both lie buried, the Mother died in 1872. He died in 1874, one small daughter and Son by the first wife “Bud”. Fifty years ago this old cemetery had many nice grave stones and markers, but to date vandals have destroyed and hauled away all these stones except one marked Elizabeth Chenault Nov 1858. These stones were used to trim around the fireplace, one man said, to make flower beds one woman told.”
“The summer of 1890 (I was 10 years old at the time) Robert Ferris (son of Warren) and an old child hood friend Wes Chenault came to see my Father, saying that they had just finished clearing brush and vines from the old family graves and had built a fence … In the fall of 1900, two ladies from the North, having read the book by Ferris, came to Dallas to learn what [become] of him, the Dallas News sent them to see my Father, he was a surveyor and did some writing for the News. I took them to see the old abandoned farm and home and to see the old cemetery. Then to call on an old neighbor that knew the Ferris family and get the report he had of this family. His report was good, saying that he was the best mathematician in the state and that he had more books than he had ever seen in one home.”
“Now this Ferris Clan live well scattered over the state, now in the third and fourth generations. They have annual get togethers each summer, this past season (1956) they met in Oklahoma, while there talking of old past time, Jack Ferris, son of Robert, said that he remembered his father once say that he and Wess [sic] Chenault, one time cut the brush and vines from their lots and put up a four post fence around their lots. So here lately the grandchildren have again cleared away all brush and vines and find the old posts burned off. So with the Chenault grave still with the old marker standing, the old Ferris graves have at last been found.”
“Warren took no part in the civil war, claiming old injuries and trouble from an old musket bullet in the right shoulder he got in an Blackfoot Indian fight while in the mountains.”
“A granddaughter tells me that they have found the old chain used by the old surveyor, with lots of old papers and field notes of his old surveys of this part of the country.”
“For more than sixty five years my home, the old farm joined fences with this Ferris property, the past history was always interesting to me all through my growing up days. About one hundred yards from this old cemetary {sic}, there used to stand an old log house there is where the James Boys, Jesse, Frank and their gang lived in the winter of 1872 and 73, here is were they buried their gold. It was taken out the winter of 1889 or 90 when work men they dug a large hole but it is now about filled up with thrash {sic} and builders rubish [sic], as this part of Forest Hills is about all taken up with beautiful homes. In the old Ferris home is where Sam Bass and his gang lived while planning the holdup of the Texas and Pacific train in Mesquite. While proved to be his last, as he was killed a short while later at Round Rock, but that is another story.”
“ By this I am making the appeal to our citizens league, Historical Society or some one to do something to save this old sacred spot from further destruction or modern development.”
Robert Cole, written about 1956
Sketch of Warren A. Ferris home (sketch by memory from Robert Cole)
