History
Olivewood was incorporated in 1875, a mere 10 years after emancipation arrived for Texas slaves when, on June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger debarked in Galveston and made the official announcement a couple of months after the actual end of the war. The cemetery, the people who incorporated it and the people now resting in it are part of a much larger history of Houston and its African American community.
A number of Houston’s prominent African Americans are buried in Olivewood, including:
- Elias Dibble, the first black ordained Methodist minister in
the country and founder of Trinity Methodist Church. Dibble began life
as a slave and arrived in Houston as one of the many freed slaves seeking
opportunity.
- Wade Hampton Logan, also an early pastor of Trinity and a presiding elder for the Navasota and Marshall Districts of the Methodist Church.
- James D. Ryan, philanthropist, educator and community leader,
was born in 1872 and served as the Dean of Education in Houston.
- Dr. Charles B. Johnson, also known as The Singing Dentist and author of Houston’s Bicentennial song “Houston is a Grand Old Town” written in 1927 but performed in 1976.
Each of these men are accompanied by the remains of hundreds of their community members who lived and worked alongside them as shopkeepers, seamstresses, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and soldiers. For more information on these men and women, visit our Listing of the Interred page.
Future Projects on Olivewood's History
For more information about the history projects that Descendants of Olivewood are working on, click here.
