Sweeny Cemetery
Sweeny, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Begun as family burial ground when John Sweeny, early landowner, member of Stephen F. Austin's colony, chose this site for burial of his young daughter, Freedonia, 1833. In use ever since by the neighborhood. Has graves of veterans of all wars since Texas Revolution. 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground began in 1833 when John Sweeny, an early landowner and member of Stephen F. Austin's colony, chose the site to bury his young daughter Freedonia. The neighborhood has used it ever since, and it holds the graves of veterans of every American war since the Texas Revolution. It stands as a quiet record of the families who settled this stretch of Brazoria County.
Why it matters
Rooted in Austin's original colony and holding veterans of every conflict since Texas independence, the cemetery is a layered chronicle of American settlement and service in one place.
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Related people
- · John Sweeny
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Phillips Family Cemetery
West Columbia vicinity, TX
Zeno Phillips was one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," the first legal Anglo-American colonists in Texas, and he and his brothers took up land here and served in the Republic of Texas Army. The cemetery began in 1835 with the burials of Zeno and his brother John. Later generations of the family were laid to rest at Waverly Place before the land passed out of Phillips hands in 1887.
John Adriance
West Columbia, TX
John Adriance came of age with the Texas Revolution, serving in Captain Jacob Eberly's unit as Sam Houston's army retreated before Santa Anna in the spring of 1836. Detailed to guard Bell's Landing so civilians could flee, he and fifteen comrades then raced to rejoin Houston—arriving to learn the decisive Battle of San Jacinto had already been won on April 21. He lived a long life afterward, marrying Lydia Ann Cook of New York in 1846 and dying in 1903.
Nathaniel C. Hazen
West Columbia, TX
Nathaniel C. Hazen arrived in Texas in January 1836, at the height of the revolution against Mexico. Captured with James Fannin's command, he was led out to be executed in the Goliad massacre of March 27, 1836, yet managed to escape that mass killing. He went on to fight at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in Captain William H. Patton's company, only to die in Columbia before the year was out.
Byrd Lockhart
West Columbia, TX
A surveyor who came from Missouri to Green DeWitt's colony around 1826, Byrd Lockhart laid out roads from Gonzales to the coast and San Antonio and organized frontier defenses against raids. In 1835-36 he served in the Texan army at the Siege of Bexar, helped raise the Gonzales rangers known as 'the immortal 32,' and left the Alamo on a supply mission before its final fall, later working as a spy for the army. He died in Columbia in 1839, and the town of Lockhart was named in his honor.