Historical monuments placed at Mansfield Cemetery

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

Some Mansfield history just got a new home.

After more than a decade in storage, four downtown monuments have found a new home at the Mansfield Cemetery, set in the same soil where many of the people they honor also reside.

The four stone markers were a fixture on the southeast corner of the Broad and Main streets intersection for decades before the city moved them into storage when Mellow Mushroom bought the property and built a new restaurant, which opened in August 2014.

The site had previously been the home of Memorial Hall and City Hall.

“The original veterans monument was erected in 1919 when the old Memorial Hall was built,” said Raymond Meeks, president of the Mansfield Cemetery Association. “Memorial Hall was built as a memorial to the soldiers from World War I. The monument has the names of all the men from Mansfield who served in World War I.”

Other monuments followed.

“Memorial Hall was torn down, but the monument remained,” Meeks said. “In 1952, they built City Hall there. In 1945, there was a fund established to get a marker for the World War II veterans. That fund kind of languished. Finally, in 1960, they created a big bronze plaque and included all the veterans from 1941-1959, which included Korea (War veterans). It was on the wall of the old City Hall.”

That plaque was combined with a stone marker to memorialize Vietnam War veterans.

“In 1983, a committee was formed,” Meeks said. “The idea was to get a new monument that covered the period from Korea through Vietnam. It wasn’t installed until 1986. That monument does not have individual names on it. It was too overwhelming to find all the names. We had that on one side and mounted the bronze plaque on the other side. Those two monuments are together.”

The combined monument was installed on the busy corner in 1986, which was Texas’ 150th birthday, so the monument also has the seal for the state’s sesquicentennial.

The third monument was installed in 1962 to honor Charles H. Harrison (1891-1961), who served as mayor from 1947-1955.

The final marker was dedicated to the memory of veterans from Mansfield who served in the Civil War from 1861-1865. It was erected and dedicated by the Mid-Cities Bluebonnet Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1992, and does not list the names of individual veterans.

When Mellow Mushroom purchased the property, the four stones were put into storage with the plan to eventually install them at a future veterans park, Meeks said.

“The city tried to give them to the historical society, but they had no place to display them,” Meeks said. “(Historical Society President Tom Leach) came to me and asked if the cemetery association would display them. Cemeteries are like outdoor historical parks or museums.

“There are people in the cemetery and the (adjacent) community cemetery whose names are on those monuments,” Meeks said. “It was everybody from Mansfield, whether they were white or black.”

The Mansfield Cemetery and Mansfield Community Cemetery (formerly known as the Mansfield Colored Cemetery) sit side by side on Cemetery Road, just off Burl Ray Road. The Mansfield Cemetery Association placed the World War I and World War II-Korean markers on a knoll between the two cemeteries.

The Confederate monument was set in the Cumberland section of the Mansfield Cemetery, where 38 Confederate war veterans are buried, Meeks said.

Harrison’s marker was set at his gravesite after the cemetery association contacted his descendants and got approval.

All of the monuments were set in the past two weeks.

“The ones that had a base we used the base,” Meeks said. “The World War I monument didn’t have a base but Worthington Monument Company gave us a base. It weighs 4,000 pounds. The World War II and Korea/Vietnam ones were just as heavy.”

Another monument, honoring all branches of the military service, will soon join the World War I and World War II markers on the knoll between the cemeteries, Meeks said. The marker is being created and donated by the American Legion.

The cemeteries are the appropriate place for the markers, he said.

“The cemetery board and the historical society board are both very excited about preserving that history,” Meeks said. “It is history and we did not want to lose it.”