Oakwood Cemetery
Tyler, Smith County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally called Lollar's Cemetery and later City Cemetery, this burial ground was located on land purchased by John Lollar in 1846. Five acres were reserved for cemetery use when Lollar sold his land to John Madison Patterson in 1849. Burials began in the 1840s, but many early gravestones have been lost. The oldest marked grave is that of four-year-old P. M. Scott, who died in 1852. The graves of numerous Confederate soldiers, who died in the Civil War (1861-1865), are situated in a raised section east of Central Drive. In another separate portion is the Jewish Beth-el Cemetery, where the oldest grave is that of 19-year-old Rachel Wolinsky, who died in 1884. In 1903, additional land was acquired and the cemetery renamed Oakwood. City officials hired William A. Woldert (1885-1937) to map the grounds, locate old graves, and lay out more walkways. Further improvements were made by WPA labor in the 1930s, when Oakwood was again enlarged. By the 1970s, the burial ground contained 19.5 acres with over 2,000 marked graves. Many of Tyler's most prominent citizens are buried here, including Judge Stockton P. Donley (1821-1871), Texas Supreme Court Justice; and Governor Richard B. Hubbard (1832-1901), who also served as U. S. Ambassador to Japan. (1978)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tyler's Oakwood Cemetery began in the 1840s as Lollar's Cemetery on land first used for burials before Texas was a decade into statehood. It holds a raised section of Confederate dead from the Civil War, a separate Jewish Beth-el Cemetery, and the graves of many leading citizens, including a Texas Supreme Court justice and Governor Richard B. Hubbard, who later served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan. WPA crews expanded and improved the grounds in the 1930s.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a stone-by-stone record of an East Texas town's whole community — Confederate soldiers, Jewish families, judges, and governors — laid out across more than a century.
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Related people
- · Richard B. Hubbard
- · Stockton P. Donley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Richard Bennett Hubbard
Tyler, TX
Richard Bennett Hubbard, a Georgia-born lawyer, settled in Tyler in 1853 and became a leading voice of the Texas Democratic Party. He raised a battalion at the Civil War's outbreak—it became the 22nd Texas Infantry, which fought at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield—then turned to railroad building when Reconstruction hemmed in his law practice. Elected lieutenant governor in 1873, he became governor in 1876 and later served as U.S. minister to Japan.
City of Tyler
Tyler, TX
Founded in 1846 in country opened to settlement after the Republic's campaigns against the Cherokee, Tyler was named by the first state legislature for President John Tyler, who had signed the resolution annexing Texas. A modest farm market at first, it became a Confederate nerve center during the Civil War—headquarters for the Trans-Mississippi Department, home to an ordnance factory, and site of Camp Ford, the largest POW camp west of the Mississippi. Railroads, industry, and the 1931 East Texas oil boom later made it a regional hub, known for its junior college and annual Rose Festival.
Colonel Bryan Marsh
Tyler, TX
This school honors Bryan Marsh, an Alabama native who came to Tyler in 1854 and rose to command a company of the 17th Texas Cavalry when war came in 1861. Captured at Arkansas Post in 1863 and later gravely wounded—losing his right arm in the fighting around Atlanta—he returned to the field until Lee's surrender. In the decades after, Marsh commanded a company of Frontier Battalion Texas Rangers, quelled violence in rough frontier towns, and served two decades as Smith County sheriff.
Smith County, C. S. A.
Tyler, TX
During the Civil War, Smith County became a major hub of Confederate activity in East Texas. Near Tyler stood the largest ordnance plant west of the Mississippi, turning out "Tyler Rifles," while Camp Ford held the biggest prisoner-of-war compound in the western Confederacy and salt works produced thousands of pounds of that vital commodity daily. On the home front, women, children, the elderly, and enslaved people raised the cotton and grain that fed the army and improvised clothing, hats, and coffee substitutes from what little they had.