FORT WORTH, Texas — If you’ve ever driven past Pioneers Rest Cemetery on Samuels Avenue in Fort Worth, you know it’s old.
Really old.
“We’ve been here since 1850,” Archivist Shelley Gayler-Smith told WFAA.
The cemetery’s age is obvious in its cracks and rust, blown over and overgrown tombstones.
“We are the oldest cemetery in Fort Worth,” Gayler-Smith said.
As the cemetery’s archivist, it’s Gayler-Smith's job and passion to preserve the history and records of the 1,566 souls buried at Pioneers.
“I think most people want to feel like their life was for a purpose,” she said. “I think most people want to be remembered.”
But few people come to pay their respects at this 174-year-old resting place, where the earliest pioneers responsible for developing the city lie.
That lack of foot traffic is what brought her to the Fort Worth History Center. Gayler-Smith studied dozens of books and archived newspaper clippings. She did hundreds of hours of research on the men and women buried in Pioneers, used what she learned, and made QR codes.
“You can just pick up your phone and any of the photo apps!” she said.
Gayler-Smith created 20 handmade QR codes, placed just to the side of 20 tombstones. If you scan it, it will take you straight to a digital biography of the pioneer buried under it.
The project was sponsored by a grant from Tarrant County Historical Society, she said.
“There’s so many stories in here, some of them have been told, and some of them have never been told.”
Gayler-Smith and several other volunteers are using the codes to share those untold stories now.
“Etta Newby died on June 23, 1836,” volunteer Cecelia Van Donselaar said as she read one of the pioneer’s biographies.
“[Newby] bought the first house, 1613 Pennsylvania, that became the Fort Worth's Women's Club building that’s still in use today,” Van Donselaar explained.
“Ephraim Daggett was instrumental in bringing the Texas and Pacific railroad to the city,” Melanie Smith, President of the Pioneers Rest Cemetery Association read.
“This is Dr. Carol Marion Peak,” Volunteer Teresa Wilson read off another biography.
Peak was Fort Worth’s first-ever physician.
“He committed himself to providing medical care to anyone within a 30-mile radius of Fort Worth…may they be rich or poor, black white or red.”
There are 17 other pioneers whose stories are told through the QR code, like Belle Andrews.
Andrews was a young socialite, Fort Worth’s party girl, Gayler-Smith said.
“Belle would die of consumption at 29, today we would call this tuberculosis,” she read.
All of their stories, these women promise, are intriguing.
“Lawlessness, brothels and saloons,” Smith explained.
“Relatives shot relatives!” Wilson added.
“Moneys and crime and drama,” Van Donselaar explained.
But if that’s not enough to convince you to stop by and read these biographies, they said, maybe AddRan Clark is.
AddRan was the son of Addison Clark who founded TCU, which was first named AddRan College. He died at 3 years old.
AddRan had 7 siblings, but none of them were buried here,” Ken Roberts, a family descendant, told WFAA.
“His parents were not buried here, he’s the only one in his family here, and I always thought he was kind of lonely. You can no longer read his tombstone, it’s illegible, so now with the QR people are able to read about AddRan and know his story, and know that he’s here and that means a lot…I think he’s less lonely.”
“The people of your family, will one day, and yourself will end up in a cemetery and what would you want remembered about you?” Gaylor Smith added.
“They come alive again, for a brief moment they come alive again.”