Moody Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passing it along to you. The town of Moody was founded in 1881, and it wasn't long before the settlers started thinking about something every community eventually has to think about. They needed a proper burial ground, one closer than the cemetery way out at the Old Perry townsite, two and a half miles to the northeast.

So they put their heads together, they made their plans, and they purchased a tract of land from a man named J. Parker Naylor. That's where this cemetery stands today.

The first person laid to rest here was Flora Welch, a seven-year-old girl who died in 1889. You think about that for a moment. Before there were many graves, before there was much of anything marking this as a place, a little girl named Flora was the first.

Then, in 1890, someone thought to bring hackberry trees from the banks of the nearby Leon River and transplant them here. Shade and roots, literally transplanted from living water to a resting place. By 1929, a woman's federation had formed to care for this ground, and it would later become the Moody Cemetery Association.

Miss Rob McCauley stepped in as president of that association and held that post for thirty-five years. Thirty-five years of tending to a place that mattered. Many of the early pioneers of Moody are buried here, the people who built the town, who planted the trees, who made the plans in the first place.

Flora Welch was the first. She wasn't the last.

What the marker says

Soon after Moody was founded in 1881, area settlers developed plans for a community burial ground closer than the cemetery at the Old Perry townsite (2.5 mi. Ne). Purchased from J. Parker Naylor, the original tract at this site was first used for the burial of Flora Welch (d. 1889), a 7 year-old girl. Hackberry trees here were transplanted from the banks of the nearby Leon river in 1890. A woman's federation, later the Moody Cemetery Association, was started in 1929 and Miss Rob McCauley served as president for 35 years. Many early pioneers of Moody are buried here.