Preserving community
Special to the Star-Telegram
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When Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church purchased the Handley Cemetery for the Colored Citizens in 1888, it was one of only a few burial grounds reserved for North Texas’ former slave population.
Many of the buried are among the community’s oldest settlers and leaders as well, making the cemetery the last memorial to the African-American founders of what is now known as Stop Six. A once-thriving community of farmers and ranchers, the area was originally named after James Madison Handley, a former Confederate army major who owned a large plantation to the east of the original town.
Ebenezer trustees purchased two acres: one for the church’s first physical structure; the remaining acre reserved for the dead. In 1930, the church moved approximately five miles west of the cemetery where, according to county historical records, the last burial took place in 1967.
According to Fort Worth City Council member Frank Moss, also a member of Ebenezer, many of the older graves were not marked.
“The cemetery was certainly in need of restoration,” he said. “It had not only deteriorated somewhat over the years, but it had been vandalized.”
Wild bushes, trees and weeds overwhelmed the marked and unmarked gravesites, and with the exception of an annual Memorial’s Day picnic hosted by Ebenezer, the Handley Hill Community Cemetery, renamed by the church, sat for years deteriorating on a hill overlooking scenic Lake Arlington.
That is until early 2007, when two of the cemetery’s corporate neighbors, Quicksilver Resources, Inc. and Exelon Corporation, stepped up and offered to refurbish the historic burial site.
As Rev. Bruce Datcher, Ebenezer’s pastor recalls: “Quicksilver and Exelon saw how the cemetery was being constantly vandalized and asked if they could be good neighbors.”
Barnett Shale drilling partners, Quicksilver leases mineral rights from Exelon, whose power generation plant shares Lake Arlington’s northwest border with the cemetery. Quicksilver’s executives approached Exelon and by March 2007 the restoration project was underway.
Rick Buterbaugh, Quicksilver’s vice president of investor relations and corporate planning, said his company was motivated by its desire to be conscientious community neighbors.
“The cemetery was a worthy cause that would benefit many members of the community,” he said.
Together, the two corporations sponsored the construction of a wrought iron fence, anchored all around by solid brick posts. A sonogram was used to detect unmarked plots among the approximately 200 graves. The roadway leading up to the cemetery was paved, and a gravel parking area was created.
Expending a great deal of sweat equity, church and corporate volunteers came forward to clear the area of years of overgrowth both within and surrounding the site.
Gerome Randle, Exelon’s plant general manager, said his company is extremely pleased by the project’s outcome given that the cemetery was so overrun with overgrowth that visitors were unable to see the lake.
“Exelon moved to Texas in 2002,” he said, “and one of our core objectives is to assist our community neighbors in whatever way we can. As new corporate citizens we saw this as a unique and valuable project.”
On Memorial Day 2007, the site was re-dedicated during a ceremony attended by church and community members including Mayor Mike Moncrief, Congressman Michael Burgess and council member Moss. A cemetery gazebo was constructed in summer 2007.
“The church was elated,” said Rev. Datcher.
In addition to refurbishing the cemetery, Quicksilver also donated approximately $25,000 to Ebenezer for the creation of its 501c3, not for profit corporation, Brighter Outlook, Inc.
Founded in June 2007, the corporation will promote and provide services aimed at improving the quality of life for community residents out of a facility still under construction.
The Moses Houston Family Life and The B.W. Lockett Education Center will provide life and job skills training, youth programs and senior citizen outreach.
“We see the constant everyday need that faces so many from health to education,” said Rev. Datcher. “We want to make a difference not only in this community, but wherever one suffers and needs a helping hand.”
