Warren Ferris Cemetery. Photo by Renee Umsted.
Friends of Warren Ferris Cemetery has big plans for the site they nurture, and they want to see other historical cemeteries in the area do the same.
Julie Fineman, who leads the friends group and lives next door to the cemetery, said they want to develop a self-guided tour of the cemetery; people will be able to scan QR codes placed throughout the area and learn more about history and other features of the cemetery.
Inspired by the self-guided tour app available at Hart Island in New York, a large cemetery that has been opened to the public as a park, it’s a tool they’d like to share with other cemeteries, including the Oak Cliff Cemetery.
In the long-term, the friends group wants to raise $200,000 for the Constellation of Living Memorials program, which outlines a vision for how cemeteries can become natural habitats, featuring native plants and serving as a place for migratory wildlife.
They also want to continue adding native plants and install two stone signs. One sign will have the 30 names of the known individuals who were buried at the cemetery; it’s estimated that around 130 people were buried there. There will also be an ode to Susanne Starling, who died in 2022; Starling reported her years of research on Warren Ferris in a book called Land Is The Cry!
The other stone will be placed near the main entrance on San Leandro Drive and will welcome visitors to the cemetery. It’s named for Warren Ferris, the first person to survey Dallas.
To do all of this, the friends group needs funding.
At a fundraiser, planned for 3-6 p.m. April 23, John Dufilho will provide live music. There will also be food and drinks from Ascension Coffee, which opened on Garland Road.
A local surveyor will lead a demonstration of surveying equipment that Ferris would have used in the 1800s.
And Katrena Koellner, a Forest Hills resident and Woodrow Wilson High School student, will be discussing an initiative she started. The Tree of Life Project aims to transplant young, native trees from the Warren Ferris Cemetery to Dallas schools.
Plus, there will be a silent auction, where attendees can bid on items such as jewelry and art created by artists who have worked in the cemetery.
Tickets to the fundraiser are available here.
No headstones remain, after years of neglect and vandalism. But since 2019, Fineman and neighborhood volunteers have been fixing up the cemetery and turning it into a haven for wildlife and native plants. They spent months removing invasive privet and ivy that had taken over the lot.
“I was often saying, ‘What am I doing? What am I doing this for?’ And then it’s like, oh yeah, for Mother Nature,” said Fineman, who’s a Master Naturalist.
With donations, they have installed bat boxes, owl boxes and birdhouses, along with wildlife cameras to capture the action. There’s a water feature needed for the cemetery to become a Monarch butterfly way station.
And during the pandemic, Fineman helped create a documentary series, which is free to watch online, that details the history of the cemetery and Warren Ferris and discusses the plants found there.
“Children and mothers come in. They play,” Fineman said. “A lot of mothers want their kids to feel what a wilderness experience is like. This is a wilderness experience in their own backyard.”
