DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Hodge's Bend Cemetery tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Alexander Hodge was born in 1760, and by the time most men his age were content to sit on a porch and reminisce, this man had already lived several lifetimes' worth of story. He rode with Francis Marion's South Carolina brigade during the American Revolution — Marion, the so-called Swamp Fox, the guerrilla fighter who gave the British fits through the Carolina lowlands.
That's the company young Alexander Hodge kept. So you might say the man had a nose for frontier country and a taste for what came next. In 1825, he packed up his family and brought them to Texas.
And not just anywhere in Texas — he came in early enough, bold enough, to be counted among the Old Three Hundred, Stephen F. Austin's original settlers. That is a short and storied list to be on.
Then, in 1828, Austin granted Hodge a tract of land. That grant got a name: Hodge's Bend. And somewhere within it, on a quiet piece of ground, a cemetery took root.
The first grave dug there was for his wife Ruth, who died in 1831. You feel that one. A man who'd survived a revolution, crossed into a wild new land, carved out a place for his family — and then stood at that fresh-turned earth alone.
His sons went on to fight in the Texas Revolution, carrying the family's habit of showing up when history called. Alexander Hodge himself was buried in that same ground in 1836. The cemetery grew over the years — descendants, neighbors, early settlers of the area — until it held about seventy-five graves.
The last burial there was in 1942. More than a century of Texans, laid to rest in land that started with one Revolutionary War veteran who just couldn't stop moving toward whatever came next.
What the marker says
A veteran of "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion's South Carolina brigade during the American Revolution, Alexander Hodge (b. 1760) brought his family to Texas in 1825. Hodge was prominent among the "Old Three Hundred" settlers; his sons fought in the Texas Revolution. His 1828 land grant from Stephen F. Austin, named Hodge's Bend, included the site for this cemetery. First grave here was that of his wife Ruth, who died in 1831. Hodge was buried here in 1836. The cemetery contains about 75 graves, including those of Hodge's descendants and other early settlers in the area. The last burial here was in 1942.