Historic Oakland Cemetery is “the final resting place of some of Dallas’ most noted citizens and veterans including civil war veterans.”
It is also the burial site of Charley Sing, Dallas’ first Chinese butcher, who died in 1909.
According to a Dallas Morning News piece written by Truman Pouncey in 1937, “A host of his fellow countrymen gave Charley a grand finale with firecrackers and all the trimmings when he departed this world, including the placing on his grave of a fine, fat roasted pig with an apple in its mouth.
An American bystander asked the leader of the Chinese mourners: ‘How soon do you think Charley will come up to eat the pig?’ Thereupon, in all gravity, the Chinese replied: ‘About as soon as ‘Melican man come up to smell flowers you put on his grave.”
Charlie began his career as a cook for an Oak Cliff Chinese restaurant in 1899. By 1904, he was described in the Dallas city directory as a “meat market proprietor” in partnership with Jewish grocer Samuel Lansky. Their market was located at 645 N Washington in “Short North Dallas.” (Dallas Heritage Village. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 19, Number 2, Fall, 2007)
