THE LONESOME GRAVEYARD

Richard Tyler

On Interstate 30 is the lonesome Christmas tree.  We have all seen it.  It sits up on a hill overlooking downtown.  Numerous persons decorate it at Christmas.  It has even had a book written about it.  Not far from the Christmas tree on a hill overlooking downtown and the Trinity River is another lonesome location.  It is the Ayres Cemetery.  It has been at its location many years before the Christmas tree.  In 1861 Benjamin Patton Ayres and his wife, Emily bought a 320-acre farm and set aside 2 acres on this hillside as a family cemetery.  Mister Ayres, who served as the second Tarrant County Clerk and who helped organize the Fort Worth First Christian Church was the first person buried there.  He died in 1862.  His wife died the following year in 1863.  Several other members of the Ayres and Sanderson family are also buried there.  Ida Ayres, Benjamin’s granddaughter, was the last descendent buried there in 1955.  The cemetery received a Texas Historical marker in 1983. There are an unknown number of graves, which lie outside the fenced family plot.  Some of these people died of spring fevers and Trinity River Floods.  None of their headstones have survived, but the Ayres Cemetery remains as a symbol of the area’s early settlers. 

Sometime after the turn of the century the property changed hands.  The property below the Cemetery was the property of the Minor family.  They became hog farmers.  Lots of hogs were raised on that property.  Some were on the hillside and others were down below. When the wind was from the South and it was the prevailing wind, the odor was very pungent on the former toll road beside it.  In or about 1960 my wife and I and our two small children were in the car.  Our son Paul was about 3 years old and his sister Sherry was about 1 year old.  We passed by the hog farm and the wind was indeed out of the South and the smell engulfed the car.  Paul took a deep whiff and exclaimed “ Mama change Sherry”.   It did indeed seem as if a diaper change was in order. 

The Ramada Inn Hotel Chain contacted the owners about a sale.  The Ramada Inn people wanted the property for a hotel but not the hog farm below.  They went to the city to get rid of the hog farm.  The Minors were told to get rid of the hogs.  They refused and took City Hall to court.  Their argument was that they had hogs in the 1930’s and before.  The Minors won in court and were allowed to keep their hogs.  The court settlement made all the newspapers as the little person beat City Hall.  They were offered a deal, as I have been told, too good to turn down.  They eventually moved and the Ramada Inn was built.  The lonesome cemetery remains on the Trinity Hotel property today on Beach and Interstate 30.

The rest they say is history.