Effort Launched to Preserve Cemetery Filled with Early Collin County History

A group of volunteers in Collin County are working to preserve some of the county's earliest history by cleaning up one of its oldest cemeteries.

The Friends of Corinth Cemetery of Collin County recently formed through social media.

Organizer Tim Montgomery said he'd driven past the cemetery for nearly two decades, noticing the disrepair.

“Everyday I’d pass this cemetery and think what a shame nothing’s been done with it," said Montgomery. 

He searched to find it was owned by a church that ceased to exist back in 1920. Since then, he found little evidence anyone had taken responsiblity. 

But when he posted a plea for help on Facebook, he realized he wasn't alone in his desire to restore it to its former reverence.

A small group of volunteers got started on the clean-up effort Monday, clearing weeds around the grave markers. More than 40 have joined a Facebook community and are expected to gather for a first official meeting Thursday. 

They're now looking for gardners, arborists, landscapers and people who can help with headstone restoration and fence repair.

“My goal is to number one clear the lot, to restore the headstones and the footstones, to mark the family plots somehow someway so that we know who’s there," said Montgomery.

He knows they're some of Collin County's earliest settlers. Among them, there's the superintendent of the area's first school which once sat nearby.

Somewhere in an unmarked grave lies a man named Hardy Mills who's murder went down in local history. The man charged with his death, Ezell Stepp, was the last hanged in the county and now lies in a more reverent grave elsewhere in town. 

Still, it's those whose stories are still to be discovered that have pulled in Montgomery and the other volunteers. 

"There are babies. There's a family out here that had a baby every year and every year it died. There are probably some civil war veterans out here," said Montgomery. 

They're stories he hopes to uncover and preserve as development grows around the cemetery, so that those who will someday live there will know of those who came first. 

Those interested are welcome to join a group meeting at Taco Crush in McKinney Thursday at 7 p.m. or follow them on their Facebook page.