McKinney, Collin County, Texas

Cemeteries of Texas Coordinator: Dolores I. Bishop

Information provided by the State of Texas Atlas Site Location: from McKinney, take FM 2933 north about 7 miles to CR 412, go east on CR 412 about 1.3 miles to marker on south side of road Marker : Jesse Stiff (1796-1871) came to Texas from Virginia in 1835 and settled on several thousand acres of land in this area. His brother, Louis, arrived in 1849, and a community known as Stiff Chapel developed around their homesteads. In 1847, Jesse's son, James, died while serving as a Texas Ranger. He was buried near his father's house on land that later was deeded as the Stiff Chapel Cemetery. Most of the graves in the two-acre family burial ground date from the 1800s. The last burial in the Stiff Chapel Cemetery, that of Minnie Swaim, took place in 1935. (1984)