Lord Cemetery
Westhoff, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Lord Cemetery Established 1879 Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1879, this DeWitt County burial ground served the rural families who had settled the surrounding ranch country in the decades after the Civil War. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery, it preserves a quiet record of the community that took root here in the late nineteenth century.
Why it matters
Small family cemeteries like this one anchor the memory of the ranching families who settled South Central Texas after the Civil War.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George Lord
Westhoff, TX
Born in England in 1816, George Lord immigrated to Canada and then New Orleans before joining volunteers for the army of the young Republic of Texas in 1837. He fought through the turbulent 1830s and '40s—the Córdova Rebellion, the Somervell Expedition, and the ill-fated Mier Expedition, where he survived the notorious Black Bean lottery and imprisonment at Perote—then served as a Ranger in the Mexican War. In 1849 he joined the Gold Rush to California, marrying Kate Myers along the way, and the couple returned with a fortune in gold to establish a Longhorn ranch in DeWitt County.
Bellevue-Cheapside
Cuero, TX
Pioneer settlers, many of English descent, acquired this land in 1876 to establish a community church, school, and burial ground, with a Woodmen of the World lodge nearby. The still-used Bellevue Cemetery served the Cheapside community a mile and a half north, a town named for the famous London street that once held a cotton gin, grist mill, hotel, saloons, and shops. Though Cheapside later declined, the mark of its English founders lingers.
Lindenau
Lindenau, TX
German farmers put down roots on the DeWitt County prairie by 1891, and brothers Charles and Daniel Wild gave the place its homeland name, "Lindenau." A schoolhouse doubling as church and meeting hall anchored a full village—store, blacksmith, drugstore, post office, cotton gin, and a rifle club whose 1901 hall became the social heart of the community. When the railroad passed nearby in 1906, the whole town simply picked up and moved to meet it, a common fate before it faded after World War II.
Stevens Cemetery
Hochheim, TX
In 1846 Joseph and Sarah Ann Stevens arrived from Rankin County, Mississippi, with relatives and a number of enslaved people, buying land from members of Green DeWitt's Colony to farm and raise cattle. The family burial ground holds its oldest marker over the 1851 grave of their infant son, and the child's grandfather Elisha Stevens was laid to rest nearby months later. Pioneer family members, veterans, and descendants are honored here.