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Early settlement in Bell County began along creeks and rivers but by 1860 most of the county was divided into farms. The Mary Allen Oliver Cemetery is located on Three Forks Farm in the Three Forks Community. Franklin Allen (1818-1885) and his brother, Cornelius L. (C.L.) Allen, came to Washington County, Texas, in 1866 and relocated to the Lampasas River in Bell County in 1868. They farmed together until 1873. Around that time, Franklin and his wife, Mary J. (d. 1900), established the farm that became Three Forks Farm. When Franklin died in 1885, he was the first person to be buried in what would become Mary Allen Oliver Cemetery. Mary Allen remarried her neighbor, Benjamin Franklin Oliver (d. 1914). In 1900, Mary and Benjamin paid to officially establish a cemetery for the Three Forks Community. That same year, Mary died and was buried next to her first husband, Franklin. Over the years, over 80 residents of the area were laid to rest here. Early headstones in the cemetery are primarily sandstone or marble while modern headstones are granite. Unique features include above-ground crypts for Mary Allen Oliver and Franklin Allen and the engraving of an early marine corps emblem on the headstone of World War I veteran Augustus Oliver. The grave of Albert Fisher Jones (1915-1984) contains a bronze monument of a man in work clothes carrying a shotgun pointing to the eastern sunrise. Other graves and headstones are marked with personal, patriotic and cultural engravings and decoration. Many individuals who contributed to the area and the country are remembered and buried at this historic cemetery. |
