Veales Creek Cemetery

The naming of this creek can be attributed to the Veal/Veale brothers from Palo Pinto county, who came to this area in the late 1850s to join in the roundup of unclaimed texas cattle. Though the Veale brothers were active in this area, they eventually settled south of Caddo. Located in an area known as Yanceyville, the Veales Creek Cemetery is comprised of land received in three separate land gifts. In 1891, George Washington Tompkins (1841-1916) and his wife, Jemima C. (Layne) Tompkins (1843-1917), gifted two acres of land to the community for a public cemetery. In 1940, and again in 1983, Judge C.J. O’Connor (1893-1979) and his family moved his property’s fence line to give the public better access to the cemetery. The Veales Creek School (also known as Cedar Creek or Sorghum Flat School), situated near the cemetery, served the community and cemetery for many years until its closure in 1947.

The general landscape of the Veales Creek Cemetery is traditional with sandstone, granite, marble, and metal grave markers, and a variety of natural vegetation surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The earliest dated headstones indicate burials as early as the mid-1870s, including the grave of an unknown traveler who died sometime between 1876 and 1878. The earliest marked grave in the original cemetery is that of little Laura Copeland from 1879. Among the many pioneering families interred at this cemetery, there are veterans of the Civil War, WW I, WW II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. The Veales Creek Cemetery Association formed in 1979 by descendants of the pioneer families buried in the cemetery, and continues to care for the cemetery and serve the community