Granbury Cemetery
Granbury, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Granbury Cemetery Part of an original school land survey, this parcel was already known as "the cemetery lot" when deeded to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1885 for use as a public burial ground. A number of the stones here pre-date the 1866 founding of the city of Granbury, the earliest being that of John Edwards (1790-1853). Graves reportedly moved to this site from the Methodist churchyard on the courthouse square make it difficult to know whether some burials were original to the site or were reinterrments. In 1873, church leaders chose this hill as the location for a high school that became Granbury College in 1887. Following its closing, trustees deeded the school land to the city in 1915, allowing for College Hill's full usage as a cemetery. At rest here is War of 1812 veteran John Bennett Dickson (1793-1876), who was wounded in the Battle of New Orleans. He is joined by other veterans from the U.S.-Mexico War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Brigadier General Hiram B. Granbury (1831-1864), the city's namesake, was reinterred here in 1893; his surname is also recorded as Granberry. This cemetery chronicles the pioneers and generations of families who are the Granbury area's rich heritage. Historic Texas Cemetery-2001
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Known as "the cemetery lot" before the town of Granbury even existed, this hillside held graves predating the city's 1866 founding, the earliest from 1853. Church leaders briefly made it the site of a high school that grew into Granbury College before the land returned to full use as a burial ground in 1915. Among those at rest are the city's namesake, Confederate Brigadier General Hiram B. Granbury, and veterans of every American conflict from the War of 1812 through Vietnam.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a layered record of a North Texas frontier town's pioneers, schools, and generations of soldiers, tying one community to the sweep of American military history.
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Related people
- · Hiram B. Granbury
- · John Edwards
- · John Bennett Dickson
Related events
- · Battle of New Orleans
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nellie Gray Robertson
Granbury, TX
Born in 1894 into a struggling Hood County family, Nellie Gray Robertson entered the University of Texas in 1912 and passed the state bar in 1918, breaking into a profession then closed to women. She returned home to win election as Hood County attorney—the first woman to hold that office in Texas—and served multiple terms, and in 1925 was named to sit on an all-woman Texas Supreme Court, though she narrowly lacked the required years of practice to serve. She later wrote law books in New York and led title companies in Houston and Beaumont.
Granbury Methodist Church
Granbury, TX
The Rev. John R. Hill and seven charter members gathered this Methodist congregation in 1871, in the earliest years of Hood County, worshipping in a borrowed schoolhouse until they raised their own sanctuary in 1883. As Granbury grew, so did the church, adding buildings and programs across the decades. It took the name First United Methodist Church in 1968, part of a nationwide denominational merger.
Hood County News
Granbury, TX
Granbury's newspaper lineage reaches back to the 1872 "Granbury Vidette," the town's first paper, later shaped by owners including A. W. Crockett—a grandson of the Alamo's David Crockett—and the well-regarded Frank Gaston. A series of mergers across the decades folded competing titles together, and in 1964 the widowed Mrs. A. B. Crawford moved the paper into an 1891 building and made historic preservation an editorial cause. Later owners carried that policy forward.
First Christian Church of Granbury
Granbury, TX
This congregation took shape in the 1870s with the help of Addison and Randolph Clark, whose father Joseph A. Clark founded the Add-Ran Male and Female College nearby at Thorp Spring in 1873. That school would grow into Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The Clark brothers served as the church's first pastors, and the men of the fellowship raised a frame sanctuary in 1889.