Jacobs Well Cemetery
Wimberley, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Since 1883, Jacobs Well (Jacob’s Well) Cemetery has served as a final resting place for area residents. In 1876, three schools were organized nearby, including one for the Jacob’s Well community, named for a natural spring in Cypress Creek. The school building housed grades first through eighth and also hosted the community church. Many of the settlement’s pioneers came from South Carolina. After the school closed down, students started attending class in Wimberley. The earliest burial here is of pioneer Moses Bond Egger (d. 1883). James Hardy Monroe Spillar, who owned this property, donated land for use as a burial ground after Egger’s death. Other notable burials include Texas Ranger Foster Massey, Texas Ranger Elisha McCuistion, and Hays County sheriff Alton Lee Smithey. The interred also include ranchers, teachers, ministers, blacksmiths, store owners, housewives and veterans of conflicts dating to the Civil War. Entire families who died from epidemics are also interred here. The cemetery features vertical stones, wooden gravestones, interior fencing and a number of unmarked or unidentified graves. Around 1950, descendants of the Jacobs Well and Wimberley cemeteries began to work together to maintain the burial grounds. In 1980, the Jacobs Well families separated and formed a cemetery association, which continues to care for this burial ground. Today, Jacobs Well Cemetery continues to chronicle the history and legacy of the early area settlers.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Serving area residents since 1883, Jacobs Well Cemetery grew from a Hill Country settlement named for a natural spring in Cypress Creek, where many pioneers had migrated from South Carolina. Landowner James Spillar donated the burial ground after the death of early settler Moses Bond Egger, and the graves that followed hold Texas Rangers, a county sheriff, ranchers, teachers, and whole families lost to epidemics. Descendants formed an association in 1980 that still tends the vertical stones, wooden markers, and unmarked graves.
Why it matters
It chronicles the pioneers, lawmen, and hardships of frontier settlement in the Texas Hill Country across more than a century.
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Related people
- · Moses Bond Egger
- · James Hardy Monroe Spillar
- · Foster Massey
- · Elisha McCuistion
- · Alton Lee Smithey
Themes & tags
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