McCurley Cemetery

There were these two brothers, George and Jonas, who decided to hotfoot it to what is now Lewisville Lake.  Interesting story.  They leave Illinois and get to this area in 1856.  They acquire a bunch of land somewhere in the neighborhood of 640 acres of land.  Back in the 1800's if you wanted to be "somebody" then you owned land.  And the more land you owned, the more you were "somebody" and I guess if you really wanted to be "somebody" you named the area after yourself.  So that area became known as McCurley Prairie.  The Lewisville area was basically all prairie land.  So they started this community and put in a church,  seminary, and school among other things.  Naturally apparently being racist there was a separate school for Black kids.  Well, the Civil War comes along and apparently there were people in Texas who really had no interest in participating in this war and just wanted to live their lives.  Well some of these people decided to put together a Peace party and someone in this organization reached out to old Jonas who promptly reported this to law enforcement.  He was a Confederate and he helped get 42 people lynched over not wanting to participate in a war that the Confederate side lost.  Let that sink in.  Well in 1957, 100 years after old George and Jonas came to the area, it was decided that a dam needed to be built so Dallas wouldn't get flooded again like it did in 1908 and that got put in and so did a man made lake.  Wouldn't you know it, the McCurley's get bought out and their little community now lies at the bottom of Lake Lewisville.  The cemetery that was also put in was moved to Lewisville, TX and is situated next to Old Hall Cemetery.  So two dudes come all the way to Texas from Illinois to purchase 640 acres of land, name the place after themselves so they look like "somebody" and 100 years later their place is at the bottom of a lake and today no one gives two shits about who they thought they were.  But one of them was a fucking asshole who got 42 people murdered.