Greenwood Cemetery
Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
James Jackson Hodges (1828-1902), born in Tennessee, was a grandson of James Hodges, Sr., a delegate to the 1835 convention at San Felipe de Austin. James Jackson Hodges married Martha Pritchett in 1849. They settled in this area and built the local schoolhouse, which also served as a Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The oldest burial on this site is that of Martha's uncle, John Pritchett, a veteran of the War of 1812 who was interred here in September 1856. Other family members were buried here before Hodges deeded 1.46 acres of land for a community cemetery in 1896. Nine of James Jackson and Martha Pritchett Hodges' twelve children were interred here. A cemetery association, formed in 1969, continues to care for the cemetery, which remains a chronicle of area pioneers. (1999) Historic Texas Cemetery.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
James Jackson Hodges, grandson of a delegate to the 1835 Texas convention at San Felipe de Austin, married Martha Pritchett in 1849 and settled this area, building a schoolhouse that doubled as a Cumberland Presbyterian church. The oldest grave here is Martha's uncle John Pritchett, a War of 1812 veteran buried in 1856; Hodges deeded the land as a community cemetery in 1896. Nine of the couple's twelve children rest here in what remains a chronicle of area pioneers.
Why it matters
Greenwood Cemetery threads together three generations of American westering — a War of 1812 veteran, a revolutionary-era Texas delegate's line, and the pioneers who built a Gonzales County community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at Greenwood Cemetery is to stand in the part of Texas that filled up in the long generation after independence. Gonzales County had already earned its place in the story of the Texas Revolution, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the fighting had given way to the slower, harder work of settlement. Families arrived from the older Southern states, staked out farms, and set about building the institutions a community needs to survive: a school, a church, a burying ground.
The people who settled this corner of the county carried the frontier in their blood. James Jackson Hodges was born in Tennessee in 1828, and Tennessee in those years was itself a jumping-off place, a state whose sons and daughters kept pushing the American map westward. When such families reached Texas, they brought their faiths and their habits with them, and they planted them in new soil.
This was the era of the Early Republic giving way to statehood, and then of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age that followed the Civil War. A rural cemetery like this one quietly recorded all of it, one grave at a time, long after the headlines had moved elsewhere.
People & events
The story here begins with a marriage. In 1849 James Jackson Hodges married Martha Pritchett, and the young couple settled in this area to make their life. What they built says a great deal about their values: they raised the local schoolhouse, and that same building served the community as a Cumberland Presbyterian church. On the frontier a single roof often had to do double duty, teaching children on weekdays and gathering worshippers on Sundays.
The oldest grave on the site belongs not to the Hodges family directly but to Martha's uncle, John Pritchett, a veteran of the War of 1812 who was laid to rest here in September of 1856. That single burial reaches back across half a century of American history, linking this quiet Texas ground to a war fought when the republic was still young.
Other family members followed him into the earth before James Jackson Hodges formally deeded 1.46 acres as a community cemetery in 1896. The weight of the family's loss is written into the record: of the couple's twelve children, nine are buried here. Hodges himself lived until 1902, long enough to see the burying ground he founded become the permanent home of so many he loved.
Its place in the American story
Greenwood Cemetery is a small place that holds a large stretch of the American story. In one plot of Texas ground it threads together three chapters of the nation's westward movement. There is a War of 1812 veteran, a man of the early republic. There is the family memory of a grandfather who took part in the Texas convention at San Felipe de Austin in 1835, one of the gatherings where Anglo settlers debated their future on the eve of revolution. And there are the pioneers themselves, the couple who cleared land and built a school.
That layering is the real American pattern. The frontier was never settled by strangers alone; it was settled by families who carried older loyalties and older griefs with them and stitched them into new communities. A grandfather's politics, an uncle's soldiering, a couple's twelve children, all end up in the same acre.
When a cemetery association formed in 1969 to care for these grounds, it was doing something quietly national: keeping a chronicle of ordinary founders whose names appear in no textbook but whose work made a county, and a country, possible.
If you visit
Come to Greenwood the way you would come to read an old book. The stones here are the pages, and the earliest of them tell you the most. Look for the oldest markers first and let your eye move forward in time, watching how the dates carry you from the 1850s through Reconstruction and into the twentieth century.
You will notice how families gather even in death. Search out the clustered graves and you begin to feel the shape of a single household stretched across generations, the parents and the many children who did not outlive them. Reading those dates side by side is a sobering, human experience that no summary can give you.
This is a designated Historic Texas Cemetery, and part of the pleasure of a visit is simply the quiet of a working country burying ground still tended by the descendants and neighbors who care about it. It fits naturally into a slow day of back-road Texas history in Gonzales County, a place to pause, walk the rows, and let the pioneers introduce themselves.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · James Jackson Hodges
- · Martha Pritchett Hodges
- · John Pritchett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Hodges, Sr.
Gonzales, TX
James Hodges, Sr. arrived at Gonzales in April 1835 and quickly bought four leagues of land at the forks of the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers, paying three thousand dollars in silver. That autumn the townspeople elected him a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, the convention that created a provisional government and placed Sam Houston over a new Texas army. He supplied the army in 1836, fled with his family during the Runaway Scrape, and later returned to serve on the county's land commission and raise his family on the rivers.
Duncan's Ferry (on San Marcos River)
Gonzales, TX
Scotsman Benjamin Duncan began his ferry across the San Marcos River around 1834, on the eve of the Texas Revolution. Tradition says Susanna Dickinson, a survivor of the Alamo, stopped at Duncan's home while carrying word of the fort's fall to Gonzales, whose men had died in the battle. On hearing the news, Sam Houston ordered the Texas army's retreat and had the town and ferry burned in March 1836; Duncan later rebuilt and ran the crossing until 1866.
King Cemetery
Gonzales, TX
Perched on a hill above King Flats on the Guadalupe River, this burial ground has served the area since the 1830s, when John Gladden King—a member of the DeWitt Colony's governing council—and his wife Parmelia settled the land in 1830. The oldest marked grave belongs to two-day-old William G. Hall, who died in 1838, and seven generations of the King family rest here. Among the graves lie Texas Rangers and veterans of conflicts spanning the War of 1812 through the Korean War.
Odd Fellows Cemetery
Gonzales, TX
Established in 1870, this burial ground was founded under the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, one of the great fraternal orders that provided mutual aid, burial insurance, and social bonds to nineteenth-century Americans. Cemeteries like it were often a community's most enduring institution, tying together the families of Gonzales across generations. It is recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery.