Impending Construction at Crutchfield Cemetery in Denton County

Lucy Lugrand's grave is one of the very few markers I found at Crutchfield Cemetery in Denton County, Texas.

Crutchfield Cemetery is an African American burial ground that is all but forgotten among a a construction boom in eastern Denton County.

Denton County, Texas has been experiencing a population boom over the past decade. New developments with cookie-cutter houses are springing up all the time, and rural pasture land and quiet country roads have now become noisy construction pits with traffic jams. Historic preservation can't be done as fast as these developments are erected, however, which is why this post is yet another tale of an endangered historic place.

In the midst of all this madness lies Crutchfield Cemetery, a forgotten burial ground that was once in a remote location on the eastern side of the county near the Collin County line. Today, the broken pieces of tombstones along an unmarked fence line are being threatened by the construction of David Weekly homes.

The cemetery is named after the Crutchfields, an African American family. Their neighbors, like the Mays, Edwards, and Lugrands (Legrand), Parks, Forests, Jones, and Burnes, were yeoman and tenant farmers in the decades after the Civil War. They married each other within a small community that stood between the Parvin settlement (east of Aubrey) and Pilot Point, but not everything was peaceful. In 1894, Jim and George Crutchfield, two brothers, were killed by their neighbor, Will Mitchell, over a dispute about destructive livestock. George Crutchfield's grave is documented in the cemetery, although neither Jim's nor Will Mitchell's graves have been recorded.

Over the years, the families left the area, which may be why the cemetery has become neglected. One of the children of Ellison and Lucy Lugrand, a couple that is listed as having been buried at Crutchfield Cemetery, purchased a farm in Oklahoma, and several descendants moved to Denton and Dallas for more opportunities. My son and I decided to hike to the cemetery after reader Anne A. Frederick alerted me to the cemetery, and it took me a moment to discover it. I could only find a few remains, although the entry for Find-A-Grave documents many more.

The cemetery needs to be surveyed and fenced to make sure it doesn't get plowed over. Anne Frederick has already alerted the Denton County Office of History and Culture of the cemetery, but they will probably need volunteers to do the staking - they are a relatively small preservation office, after all (but at least Denton County has one!!!). So here's a little whisper to put in your ear: if you live in Denton County, let your commissioners know that this graveyard is important, and then start explaining to teachers and professors that this preservation project would be an excellent learning activity for students in the area, whether in high school, scouts, or college!

The only part of the Crutchfield Cemetery I could find on my hike is a bit overgrown.

I'm not 100% sure, but this may be part of a wooden marker in the Crutchfield Cemetery.

An abandoned trailer sits near the Crutchfield Cemetery.

The shed that belongs to the abandoned trailer looks a little lonely, except it has a horde of suburban ranch houses ringing it, as you can see in the background. There's no problem with that, but it's best if the construction does not topple the cemetery.

This map shows the location of Crutchfield Cemetery: east of Aubrey and west of Celina/Prosper along the US 380 Highway route in Denton County, which is statistically the fastest-growing corridor in the nation currently.