Taylor Family Cemetery
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THIS BURIAL GROUND, ALSO KNOWN AS TAYLOR-BENNETT CEMETERY, ORIGINALLY SERVED THE TAYLOR FAMILY. IT LATER ALSO BECAME THE FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR MEMBERS OF THE BENNETT FAMILY, WHO WERE JOINED WITH THE TAYLORS THROUGH THE 1857 MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH J. DAY (STEP-DAUGHTER OF PITKIN TAYLOR) TO BRITISH-BORN JOSEPH W. BENNETT. JOSIAH AND HEPHZIBETH TAYLOR WERE EARLY ANGLO SETTLERS, MIGRATING TO TEXAS IN 1824. THEY SETTLED NEAR HERE WITH THEIR FAMILY IN 1829 AS PART OF THE De WITT COLONY. HOWEVER, JOSIAH TAYLOR FIRST CAME TO TEXAS IN 1812, WHEN HE JOINED THE GUTIÉRREZ-MAGEE EXPEDITION, A FILIBUSTERING EXCURSION DURING THE MEXICAN WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE. HE PARTICIPATED IN THE SEIGE AT LA BAHÍA AND IN THE BATTLES OF ROSILLO AND ALAZAN CREEK. THE TAYLORS’ IMMEDIATE FAMILY INCLUDED TEXAS RANGERS, VETERANS OF THE TEXAS WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, PARTICIPANTS IN THE RUNAWAY SCRAPE AND VETERANS OF THE BATTLE OF SALADO CREEK IN 1842. JOSIAH TAYLOR’S GRAVE IS THE OLDEST IN THE CEMETERY, DATING TO 1830. OTHERS BURIED HERE INCLUDE VETERANS OF U.S. MILITARY CONFLICTS AND THOSE KILLED DURING THE SUTTON-TAYLOR FEUD, THE LENGTHIEST AND DEADLIEST IN TEXAS HISTORY. THE CEMETERY FEATURES VERTICAL STONES, GRAVE SLABS, CURBING AND MASONIC INSCRIPTIONS. IN 1974, THE TAYLOR FAMILY ASSOCIATION FORMED TO MAINTAIN THE GRAVEYARD. TAYLOR FAMILY MEMBERS WERE NO LONGER BURIED HERE AFTER 1933, THOUGH THE BENNETT FAMILY CONTINUES TO USE AND CARE FOR THE BURIAL GROUND. TODAY, THE TAYLOR FAMILY CEMETERY REMAINS A RECORD OF AND MONUMENT TO TWO PIONEERING FAMILIES WITH VITAL CONNECTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF TEXAS. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2009
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Also called Taylor-Bennett Cemetery, this DeWitt County burial ground began with Josiah Taylor, whose grave from 1830 is its oldest. Taylor first entered Texas in 1812 with the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition, fighting at La Bahía and in the battles of Rosillo and Alazán Creek, then settled with his family as part of the DeWitt Colony in 1829. His descendants included Texas Rangers, veterans of the Texas Revolution, and participants in the Runaway Scrape, and among those buried here are men killed in the notorious Sutton-Taylor Feud.
Why it matters
It preserves the deep roots of an Anglo pioneer family through the filibustering era, Texas independence, and the bloodiest feud in the state's history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand in this DeWitt County burial ground is to look back to the very earliest chapters of Anglo settlement in Texas — a time before there was a Texas in any modern sense. When Josiah and Hephzibeth Taylor migrated here in 1824 and settled with their family in 1829 as part of the DeWitt Colony, this was a distant frontier of Mexico, opened to American colonists under empresario contracts. It was land rich in promise and thick with danger.
But Josiah Taylor's connection to Texas ran back further still, to 1812, when the region was a battleground in the long struggle over who would rule it. These were the years of filibustering expeditions and revolution against Spanish colonial power, when armed men crossed into Texas to fight for causes and fortunes that were rarely secure.
The generations that followed the Taylors into this cemetery lived through nearly every convulsion of early Texas: colonization, revolution, the flight of settlers before an advancing army, frontier ranging, and — after the Civil War — a feud so bitter it became a byword for lawlessness. Few family plots anywhere carry such a dense record of a place being born.
People & events
The story begins with Josiah Taylor himself, whose 1830 grave is the oldest in the cemetery. As a young man in 1812 he joined the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition, a filibustering venture tied to the Mexican war for independence from Spain. He was there for the siege at La Bahía and fought in the battles of Rosillo and Alazán Creek — actions from a chaotic, half-forgotten war that briefly shook Spanish control of Texas. Years later he returned as a colonist, trading the soldier's life for the settler's.
His family carried that martial thread through the founding of Texas. The Taylors' immediate kin included Texas Rangers, veterans of the Texas War for Independence, participants in the Runaway Scrape — the panicked flight of settlers ahead of the Mexican army in 1836 — and men who fought at the Battle of Salado Creek in 1842. The cemetery also became the resting place of the Bennett family, joined to the Taylors in 1857 when Elizabeth J. Day, stepdaughter of Pitkin Taylor, married the British-born Joseph W. Bennett.
And then there is the darkest chapter written in these stones. Among those buried here are men killed in the Sutton-Taylor Feud, remembered as the longest and deadliest feud in Texas history. It is a sobering counterpoint to the family's earlier service: the same lineage that helped win and settle Texas was also caught in the violence that convulsed it after the Civil War. Burials of Taylor family members ended in 1933, though the Bennett family continues to use and care for the ground, and a family association formed in 1974 to maintain it.
Its place in the American story
The Taylor family cemetery compresses the entire arc of how a frontier became a state, and it does so through one bloodline. The filibustering era, colonization under a foreign flag, revolution and independence, the flight and return of settlers, the ranging companies that guarded the frontier — these were the successive waves that made Texas, and this single family rode through all of them.
It also refuses to sentimentalize that history. The presence of Sutton-Taylor Feud victims in the same ground as revolutionary veterans is a reminder that the American frontier was not only built by heroism but scarred by disorder, where weak institutions and long memories could turn neighbors into enemies for years on end. The story of settling the West is incomplete without that shadow.
That a family association still tends these graves speaks to something larger, too — the American impulse to preserve the memory of the pioneering generations, to keep their names legible against the weather and the years. This is where sweeping national history becomes personal and local: not in a textbook, but in a fenced plot of Texas ground.
If you visit
Come to this cemetery ready to read it like a timeline. Josiah Taylor's 1830 stone anchors the oldest end of the story, and from there the burials fan outward across more than a century of Texas history. The markers themselves — upright stones, grave slabs, curbing, and Masonic inscriptions — reward a close, unhurried look.
Let the layers of the past settle over you. In one quiet enclosure lie men who fought in a Spanish-colonial-era battle, kin who served as Rangers and revolutionary soldiers, and others who fell in a notorious postwar feud. Few places let you stand within arm's reach of so many distinct chapters of a state's beginnings at once.
Set in the DeWitt County countryside near Cuero, the cemetery suits travelers drawn to the deep roots of Texas rather than its highways and cities. It pairs well with a route through the old DeWitt Colony country, where the story of Anglo settlement first took hold. Stand among the Taylor and Bennett stones and consider that a single family's plot can hold the memory of a frontier becoming a nation.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Josiah Taylor
- · Hephzibeth Taylor
- · Pitkin Taylor
- · Joseph W. Bennett
- · Elizabeth J. Day
Related events
- · Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition
- · Runaway Scrape
- · Sutton-Taylor Feud
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Josiah Taylor
Cuero, TX
Josiah Taylor's life traces the violent birth of Texas across three decades. He first rode into the province in 1812 with the Gutiérrez-Magee filibuster, an armed bid to pry Mexico from Spanish rule, and was wounded repeatedly at the disastrous Battle of Medina. Returning with his family in the 1820s, he took a headright in Green DeWitt's colony, and by 1842 five of his sons were riding with Jack Hays' Rangers against a Mexican invasion.
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This ground lay within Green De Witt's 1825 empresario grant and became DeWitt County in 1846, its seat shifting from Cameron to Clinton and finally to Cuero in 1876. Settled first by Anglo-Americans and, by 1860, half by German immigrants, the county sent its men into nearly every fight of the Texas Revolution — the Alamo, Goliad, Gonzales, and San Jacinto among them. The marker rolls out a long honor list of the pioneers and soldiers who founded and defended it.
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