Massey-Steel Cemetery Restoration - Grayson County, TX
N 33° 51.097 W 096° 40.818
14S E 714612 N 3748123
The Massey-Steel Cemetery is an inactive cemetery of at least 25 burials, located on Preston Bend in Grayson County, TX. It was restored in 2000 as the Eagle Scout Project for Kirk Myers of Troop 66, although there are no signs here to indicate it.
Waymark Code: WMXN5K
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/01/2018
Views: 1
Grayson County has some good reading about this cemetery's 1999-2000 recovery and restoration, including some before and after photos. Should this document go offline, it will be available from me
here.
The Grayson County Millennium Committee undertook an effort to document the county's cemeteries, and this one was badly overgrown. Working with local veterans groups, Kirk Myers of Troop 66 organized a clean-up effort for his Eagle Scout Project. Besides being of obvious benefit to the community, the Scouts in his charge acquired needed service hours towards their own badges. Debris was removed, headstones were cleaned, and a donated fence was put into place. Myers and his 40 volunteers put in 300 man-hours, and on May 6, 2000, Myers was honored in a ceremony that re-opened the cemetery and re-dedicated the headstones of John T. and Henry Massey. John T. Massey was a veteran of the War of 1812 who came to Texas when he was nearly 80 years old, and his grandson, Henry, went off to fight for the Confederacy in 1861 when he was only fifteen, being killed in the Battle of Atlanta in 1864.
Findagrave lists 25 burials, but there is at least one unknown soldier from the Civil War buried near John Massey, and local lore is that there are probably some former slaves here, too.