Girl Scouts at McCree Cemetery
Girls Scouts from Lake Highlands Troop 2103 worked on earning their Community badge Sunday by learning about the history and heritage of Lake Highlands, Texas. After a lesson on Little Egypt, the settlement of freed slaves located at Shoreview and Ferndale, they heard about McCree Cemetery and visited the site to see old headstones and lay flowers for LH founders.
The White Rock Elementary third graders, led by Jill Creel and Lauri Griffith, also learned that Audelia Road was originally called “Ardelia Road” for Ardelia Jackson West of LH’s founding Jackson family, and they heard about Mahulda Bonner McCree, for whom the cemetery is named. They also learned some call the burial site “Rogers Cemetery” for the church, long ago burned there, and that Bonner Park near Medical City is named for Mahulda’s freed slave, Bonner, who worked to purchase land which the hospital purchased.
After their history lesson, they popped over to White Rock Lake to hear ghost stories, including the Lady of the Lake and the Legend of Elizabeth – the ghost who haunts LHHS’ auditorium.
To their delight, much of what we know about the history of McCree Cemetery, hidden behind the old telephone building at Audelia and Estate Lane, was put together by a Girl Scout troop from Wallace Elementary in 1976. Preservation Dallas stepped in in 2013 to restore the site using a $200,000 grant from the B.B. Owen Trust, and since then Robin Moss Norcross has created Friends of the McCree Cemetery to help with upkeep, support and study.
Congratulations, Girl Scouts, on your interest in Lake Highlands history.
Troop 2103 looks for The Lady of the Lake
Girl Scouts from Wallace Elementary in 1976
