DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll let the words do the work. Out here in Freestone County, there's a stretch of ground that holds more than a thousand stories underground — and one story up top that explains how it all began. This is Woodland Cemetery, and its roots go back to 1848, when pioneers — most of them coming up from Alabama — put down stakes and called this place a community.
They were building something from nothing, the way folks did. And for a while, things grew. But before long, the ground itself would start to fill.
That's the nature of communities, I suppose. The living make them. And eventually, they share them with the dead.
The first burial here was a man named Captain John L. Wortham, born in 1841, gone by 1862. He died in Galveston while serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Young man. That grave, that first grave, is where this whole story pivots. Because someone looked at that burial site and saw not just a grave, but a beginning.
That someone was Colonel Luther R. Wortham — known to friends as Dick — born in 1820, died in 1874. He'd come down from Kentucky, built himself a life as a merchant and a planter, and when Captain John L.
Wortham was laid to rest, Colonel Dick Wortham gave the land surrounding that grave. Not just for a cemetery. He gave it for Woodland College.
He gave it for a Baptist church. One man's grief — or generosity, or both — became the civic backbone of an entire community. Now, Woodland College stood and served its purpose, and then in 1906, the college building itself was given to the people of nearby Shiloh for their school.
Things passed on, as things do out here. But the cemetery held. Over a thousand graves now, resting place of many local leaders, and it still marks the very center of that historic community founded all those years ago by Alabama pioneers who showed up in 1848 with not much more than nerve and a willingness to stay.
More than a thousand souls buried in Freestone County soil — and it all started with one grave, and one man who decided that grave deserved good company.
What the marker says
In a community founded 1848 by pioneers mostly from Alabama, this cemetery was opened with burial of Capt. John L. Wortham (1841-62), who died in Galveston while in Confederate Army in the Civil War. Col. Luther R. ("Dick") Wortham (1820-74), a merchant and planter who came from Kentucky, gave land around the grave for a cemetery, Woodland College, and a Baptist church. In 1906, Woodland College building was given to the people of nearby Shiloh for their school. This cemetery with over 1,000 graves -- burial place of many local leaders -- marks center of the historic community.