Hodge's Bend Cemetery
Sugar Land, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A veteran of "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion's South Carolina brigade during the American Revolution, Alexander Hodge (b. 1760) brought his family to Texas in 1825. Hodge was prominent among the "Old Three Hundred" settlers; his sons fought in the Texas Revolution. His 1828 land grant from Stephen F. Austin, named Hodge's Bend, included the site for this cemetery. First grave here was that of his wife Ruth, who died in 1831. Hodge was buried here in 1836. The cemetery contains about 75 graves, including those of Hodge's descendants and other early settlers in the area. The last burial here was in 1942.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Alexander Hodge rode with Francis Marion's South Carolina brigade in the Revolution before bringing his family to Texas in 1825 as one of Stephen F. Austin's celebrated "Old Three Hundred" colonists. His 1828 land grant, Hodge's Bend, set aside the ground for this cemetery, which opened with the 1831 burial of his wife Ruth and received Hodge himself in 1836. Around seventy-five graves of his descendants and neighboring pioneers followed, the last in 1942.
Why it matters
The cemetery ties a soldier of the American Revolution directly to the founding generation of Anglo Texas, tracing the reach of the nation's first war into its westward expansion.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This cemetery sits at the meeting point of two founding chapters in American history. The first is the American Revolution of the 1770s and 1780s, and in particular the vicious partisan war fought in the swamps and backcountry of South Carolina, where small bands of patriot militia harried a much larger British army. The second is the settlement of Anglo Texas in the 1820s, when Mexico opened its northern lands to American colonists.
The man buried here bridged both. Born in 1760, he came of age fighting the Revolution, then lived long enough to join the very first generation of American settlers in Texas—the colonists recruited under Stephen F. Austin's empresario grant, remembered as the "Old Three Hundred."
In the 1820s the Brazos River country of what is now Fort Bend County was open frontier, granted in large parcels to families willing to farm it and hold it. A land grant here was not just property; it was the founding footprint of a family, and often, as at this site, the ground for its graves.
People & events
Alexander Hodge was a veteran of the brigade led by Francis Marion, the South Carolina partisan whose hit-and-run tactics in the swamps earned him the nickname the "Swamp Fox." That service placed Hodge among the men who kept the Revolution alive in the South at its most desperate.
Decades later, in 1825, Hodge brought his family to Texas and became prominent among Austin's Old Three Hundred. In 1828 he received a land grant from Stephen F. Austin, named Hodge's Bend, and that grant included the ground where this cemetery lies. His sons carried the family's fighting tradition into the next struggle, taking up arms in the Texas Revolution.
Death came to this ground before Hodge did. The first grave was that of his wife, Ruth, who died in 1831. Hodge himself was buried here in 1836. Around seventy-five graves eventually filled the cemetery—his descendants and other early settlers of the area—with the last burial taking place in 1942, more than a century after the first.
Its place in the American story
Few places let you touch the span of the American founding as directly as this one. A single man carried the cause from the swamps of the Revolutionary South to the frontier of a future American state, and this quiet cemetery holds the physical proof of that continuity.
Hodge's life traces how the energy of the Revolution flowed westward. The generation that won independence did not simply settle down; many of them, and their children, pushed the boundaries of American settlement outward, carrying the young nation's ambitions to the edges of the map and beyond, into what was then Mexican territory.
That his sons fought in the Texas Revolution completes the arc. One family embodies the reach of America's first war into its westward expansion—the thread that ties the fight for independence in 1776 to the settling and shaping of the West that followed.
If you visit
Approach this as a place of quiet reflection rather than spectacle. A small pioneer cemetery of roughly seventy-five graves, it rewards slow reading of the stones and the names of the families who settled this bend of the Brazos.
As you walk, hold the dates in mind: a founder born in 1760, a first burial in 1831, and a last in 1942. That long stretch means you are looking at more than a century of one community's life and loss gathered in a single plot of ground.
The cemetery fits naturally into a day exploring the deep history of Fort Bend County and the lands of Austin's original colony. It asks little of a visitor but repays the imagination generously—stand a moment and consider that a soldier of the Swamp Fox, who fought for a brand-new United States, chose this Texas ground for his family's rest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Alexander Hodge
- · Ruth Hodge
- · Francis Marion
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
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