The Young Family Cemetery in Plano is the final resting place for some of the city's earliest settlers.
"Sam and Charity Ann Young," Candace Fountoulakis with The Plano Conservancy for Historic Preservation, Inc. said pointing at a gravesite for the namesake of the cemetery. "And their descendants are buried here as well."
The historic cemetery has been through more than a century of care, and neglect, and disrepair. Over the last decade, it has been restored by volunteers with the Young Family Cemetery Association. Last October, much of that work was wiped away by a tornado.
"A small tornado developed and touched down just southwest of here and came right through this small acre," said Fountoulakis. "You couldn't even see the monuments. We had no idea what kind of shape they were in."
The EF-0 tornado hit the same night a storm brought destructive tornadoes to parts of Dallas. Over the last year, with the help of grants from the Collin County Historical Commission and emergency funds from the city of Plano, work has been done to clean up the historic cemetery and repair the damage.
"They're such historic sites that give us a connection to our past," Fountoulakis said. "These are places that are part of our past that still survive."
Fountoulakis said she sometimes thinks about the people who are buried there.
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"I do think about how shocked they would be to see what's around them now," Fountoulakis said.
"The last burial here was in 1929, so Plano has changed a lot in almost 100 years!"
