Hood Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Hood Cemetery, out in Tarrant County. Now, every piece of ground has a story beneath it, and some pieces of ground, well, that's all they are anymore. Story and stone and silence.

This cemetery began on the farm of a man named Thomas M. Hood. He was a Peters colonist, born around 1823, came to Texas from Missouri about 1845.

That's a young man making a long journey to plant roots in north Texas soil. He died in 1859, and here's the quiet irony that the land itself seems to hold: Hood is buried on his own farm, in an unmarked grave. His second wife, Maryetta, née Hall, rests beside him, her grave unmarked as well.

The man who gave this place its name left no stone to mark his own passing. The earliest marked grave belongs to Urias Martin, who lived from 1795 to 1855. Think about that for a moment.

A man born in the eighteenth century, laid to rest in north Texas ground. He got there before the territory did, in a way. Around Thomas Hood and Urias Martin, other Peters colonists were buried.

Confederate veterans too, their stories folded into the same quiet acre. And in 1871, more than a decade after Thomas Hood himself was gone, his family formally set aside that one-acre tract as a cemetery. A legal declaration of what the ground had already become.

What makes this place something to linger on, though, are the markers themselves. Handmade. Native sandstone.

Burial cairns. No fancy stonecutters, no imported marble. Just the land giving back what it had, shaped by the hands of the people who lived here.

The marker calls it resourcefulness. I'd call it something closer to grace under hard circumstances. North Texas pioneers didn't always leave much behind.

But they left this: one acre, carefully set aside, marked in stone they cut themselves. That tends to outlast just about everything else.

What the marker says

This cemetery was established on the farm of Peters colonist Thomas M. Hood (ca. 1823-1859), who came to Texas from Missouri about 1845. The earliest marked grave is that of Urias Martin (1795-1855). Among the unmarked graves are those of Hood and his second wife Maryetta (Hall). Other Peters colonists and several Confederate veterans are buried here. In 1871 Thomas Hood's family formally set aside the one-acre cemetery tract. Handmade native sandstone markers and burial cairns reflect the lifestyles and resourcefulness of early north Texas pioneers. (1982)