Big A Cemetery

Big A is the first known cemetery to have ever served the Rowlett area. Early pioneer families would travel from all the various surrounding communities to the Kirby meadow in order to bury their dead.

Some of the early pioneer graves were marked with Bois D'arc stobs. Most of these stakes have long since vanished. In many cases, all that remain of an entire pioneer family can be found in this historical cemetery. In some cases, cemetery headstones can be the only remaining physical evidence that a certain person ever existed.

What started out as a family burial ground had become a community cemetery by 1871, but wouldn't be known as Big A for at least another twenty years. It seems as if a school commonly called "Corn Stalk" by the local community members was built across the road from the cemetery back in those days and some kids painted a big "A" on the side of the building one Halloween night. The lettering stayed on the building and the school, cemetery, road and surrounding area eventually became known as Big A.

Early history of the Big A Cemetery reads like that of a master genealogist's handbook on descendants of Robert and Keziah McCoy Kirby.