Clark Cemetery
Weatherford, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
CLARK CEMETERY A COMMON BURIAL GROUND FOR EARLY PIONEER SETTLERS WHO CAMPED ALONG THE CLEAR FORK OF THE TRINITY RIVER, THE CLARK CEMETERY CONSISTS OF MANY BURIAL SITES FROM THE 1830s. IN DECEMBER OF 1853, REVEREND JOHN WILLIAM GODFREY (1825-1897) AND HIS WIFE, ANZALINE (BARKER) GODFREY (1831-1859), ARRIVED IN PARKER COUNTY FROM MISSOURI. GODFREY ESTABLISHED A METHODIST CHURCH IN THE WRIGHT COMMUNITY, NORTHEAST OF WEATHERFORD, WHERE THEY LIVED. IN 1859, ANZALINE PASSED AWAY AND WAS BURIED IN THE WRIGHT COMMUNITY BURIAL GROUNDS. IN 1880, JIM CLARK AND WILLIAM HENRY WARD FORMALLY ESTABLISHED A PERMANENT CEMETERY AT THE ORIGINAL LOCATION OF GODFREY’S CHAPEL METHODIST CHURCH. IN 1953, SIGNED DOCUMENTS DEEDED TRACT NO. 1 AND NO. 2 OF THE LAND AS BURIAL PLOT PROPERTY. ADDITIONAL LAND WAS ADDED IN 1958 AND IN 1999. IN ADDITION TO NUMEROUS PIONEER FAMILIES AND FARMERS, CLARK CEMETERY IS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF A FOUNDER OF EARLY PARKER COUNTY METHODIST CHURCHES, AN ORGANIZER OF JACK COUNTY, A TRUSTEE OF AN EARLY PIONEER SCHOOL AND A COUNTY CHIEF JUSTICE. THE OLDEST MARKED HEADSTONE IN THE CEMETERY BELONGS TO ANZALINE GODFREY, ALTHOUGH SIXTY-FIVE UNIDENTIFIED BURIAL SITES FROM THE PIONEER ERA WERE DISCOVERED WITH GROUND PENETRATING RADAR. THE CONNECTION TO MILITARY SERVICE IS REPRESENTED BY VETERANS OF THE TEXAS RANGERS, THE CIVIL WAR, WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, VIETNAM AND THE KOREAN WAR. THE LANDSCAPE OF THE CLARK CEMETERY IS TRADITIONAL WITH LIVE OAK, ELM AND POST OAK TREES WITH A LIMESTONE AND STEEL ENTRANCE GATE, RESTROOMS AND A COVERED PAVILION. THE CLARK CEMETERY ASSOCIATION CONTINUES TO CARE FOR THIS HISTORIC CEMETERY. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground began with the pioneer families who camped along the Clear Fork of the Trinity River in the 1830s, and its oldest marked grave belongs to Anzaline Godfrey, wife of a Methodist circuit-founder, who died in 1859. Ground-penetrating radar has since revealed some sixty-five unmarked pioneer-era graves alongside the named ones. Formally established in 1880 on the site of Godfrey's Chapel, the cemetery holds early Methodist founders, county organizers, a chief justice, and veterans reaching from the Texas Rangers through Korea and Vietnam.
Why it matters
A single Texas cemetery like this preserves the whole arc of a frontier community — its first families, its churches, and generations of its soldiers — in one patch of live oak and limestone.
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Related people
- · John William Godfrey
- · Anzaline Barker Godfrey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Tucker House
Weatherford, TX
Moses Tucker and his twin brother left Kentucky for the Texas frontier in 1853, raising a log cabin on this Parker County land before Moses went off to the Civil War. Returning to his wife Martha and their family, he farmed the ground he had claimed, and around 1889 the family built the vernacular board-and-batten house that still stands. For more than a century the Tuckers worked this land, a quiet record of one settler family's endurance through war, drought, and generations.
William and Elisabeth Woody Homestead
Springtown, TX
Bill Woody, one of Parker County's first Anglo settlers, left the Tennessee hills in December 1846 and set out for Texas on foot with his wife Elisabeth and their six-week-old son. After years of moving, the family built a story-and-a-half dogtrot home here by 1855, using hand-sawn yellow pine hauled by ox from New Orleans. In the Veal's Station community the house became a stagecoach stop, a boarding house for college students, a cobbler's shop, and a meeting place for every local congregation, and in 1858 Woody helped build a frame hall that served as church, school, and eventually Parsons College.
Lawson Daniel Gratz
Willow Park, TX
Born into slavery in 1839 on a Kentucky plantation, Lawson Daniel Gratz enlisted in the Federal army in 1864 and rose to first sergeant in the 114th U.S. Colored Infantry, serving at the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond and standing at Appomattox when Lee surrendered. He later reenlisted with the 10th U.S. Cavalry — the Buffalo Soldiers — and kept serving even after an explosion cost him the sight in one eye. Settling at last in Parker County, he raised fourteen children and was remembered for his leadership and unbending devotion to duty.
James Robertson Couts
Weatherford, TX
A Tennessee native and Civil War veteran, James Robertson Couts brought his family to Parker County in the mid-1860s and, with the proceeds of a cattle drive to California, opened a bank in Weatherford that endures today. An influential civic figure, he left an endowment to Weatherford College in his will and now rests beside his first wife, Martha. His life bridged the cattle-trailing frontier and the settled world of banking and philanthropy.