Hood Cemetery

🏛️The era

In the 1840s, North Texas was frontier. The Republic of Texas, eager to attract settlers and strengthen its hold on the land, granted contracts to colonizing companies. One of the largest was the Peters Colony, which brought families into a wide stretch of North Texas in exchange for land grants.

Settlers came mostly from other American states, especially the Upper South and Midwest, by wagon over long roads. They found rich prairie soil, scattered timber, and hard work everywhere they looked: clearing land, breaking sod, building cabins, and creating community from scratch.

The era included Texas's move from republic to statehood in 1845, and later the upheaval of the Civil War. Families who settled the Peters Colony lands lived through all of it, and many of their sons went to war in the 1860s.

👥People & events

Thomas M. Hood came to Texas from Missouri around 1845 as a Peters colonist. He was born about 1823, so he was a young man when he arrived to claim land on the north Texas prairie. This cemetery started on his farm.

The oldest marked grave belongs to Urias Martin, who was born in 1795 and died in 1855. He was born when George Washington was president and died on the Texas frontier, a life that spanned much of the young nation's history.

Hood himself died around 1859, still young, and he is buried here along with his second wife, Maryetta (Hall), though their graves are unmarked. Other Peters colonists rest here too, along with several Confederate veterans, a reminder that the war reached even small farm communities like this one.

In 1871 Hood's family formally set aside one acre for the cemetery, turning a family burial ground on a farm into a lasting community resting place.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Cemeteries like Hood Cemetery tell the story of ordinary Americans who settled the frontier. Most of the people who moved west weren't famous. They were farmers and families whose names appear only on local records and handmade gravestones. Their combined labor transformed the American landscape.

The Peters Colony is part of a bigger story of how land grants and colonization drew settlers into Texas and helped shape the state's population and politics. The families who came changed North Texas from open prairie into farmland.

The handmade sandstone markers and burial cairns are especially valuable. Frontier families often had to use what was at hand, and these markers show that resourcefulness. Rural cemeteries like this preserve folk traditions and material culture that disappear quickly as land is developed, which makes those that survive important.

🧭If you visit

Walk slowly and look closely. The handmade native sandstone markers and burial cairns, piles of stones placed over graves, are the heart of the place. Many old markers may be weathered or hard to read. Look for hand-cut lettering and the shapes of stones chosen by pioneer families.

Remember that many graves here are unmarked, including Thomas Hood's own. Treat the whole ground with care, stay on paths where possible, and never move or rub stones.

Southlake today is a busy suburb, and the cemetery is a quiet pocket of frontier history surrounded by modern development. That contrast makes it a fitting stop on a North Texas trip, a few minutes to think about the families who first broke the prairie here.