The Colony Cemetery
Tolar, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Residents of the community known as The Colony came to Hood County with their white southern owners as early as the 1850s. After emancipation they began to settle in this area, and many acquired land under a state law which provided settlers with the opportunity to live on land for as many as seven years before securing a patent for the property. "Doc" Foster and Simon and Hettie Hightower were such landowners. The Colony grew rapidly in the last years of the nineteenth century. A church called Mt. Zion, which also served as a temporary school was established. The earliest marked grave in The Colony Cemetery is that of Mary Edwards, who died in 1876. The Colony residents played important roles in the development of Hood County. They helped clear land for the courthouse site, executed their masonry skills on the buildings on the Granbury square, and worked on area farms. Church fundraising events and celebrations such as Juneteenth, the celebration of Texas' notification of the end of slavery, were an important part of the colony's community life. By the end of the Depression era of the 1930s, most of the adult residents had left The Colony for nearby towns, and many of the community's youth left the area completely, though they often chose to be returned to The Colony Cemetery for burial. The last three residents of The Colony left in the 1940s. The Colony Cemetery is an important chronicle of the history of Hood County and particularly of the generation of African Americans who were born in slavery and who forged new lives after emancipation, paving the road of freedom for their descendants. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The people of "The Colony" first came to Hood County in the 1850s enslaved by white Southern settlers, and after emancipation many claimed land of their own under a Texas homestead law. Their community grew quickly late in the nineteenth century around the Mt. Zion church-and-school and celebrations like Juneteenth, and its residents helped clear the courthouse grounds and lay the masonry of the Granbury square. Though the last families left by the 1940s, many descendants still return to be buried here.
Why it matters
The Colony Cemetery is a rare, tangible record of a Black community founded by people born into slavery who built free, landowning lives in Reconstruction-era Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The people of the community called The Colony first arrived in Hood County in the 1850s — not as free settlers, but enslaved, brought by white Southern owners into a raw frontier region on the edge of Anglo-Texan settlement. Their earliest years in this country were spent in bondage, their labor building the fortunes and farms of others on land they could not call their own.
Emancipation changed everything and, at first, almost nothing. Freedom arrived in Texas late — the enslaved here did not learn of it until well after it had come elsewhere — and it came without land, capital, or the tools to build an independent life. Across the Reconstruction South, formerly enslaved people faced the enormous question of how to turn legal freedom into real, self-supporting community.
What happened next in The Colony is the heart of the story. Under a Texas law that let settlers live on land for as long as seven years before securing a patent to it, these newly free families did something rare and hard: they acquired their own ground. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a landowning Black community rose here — proof of what freedpeople could build when a door to ownership, however narrow, was opened.
People & events
Names survive to anchor the story. "Doc" Foster and Simon and Hettie Hightower were among those who claimed land under that seven-year provision, turning occupancy into ownership and ownership into permanence. Around such families The Colony grew rapidly in the last years of the 1800s, becoming a settled, self-sustaining place rather than a temporary camp.
At its center stood Mt. Zion, a church that doubled as a temporary school — the two institutions, faith and learning, that anchored so many freedmen's communities. Community life had its rhythms and its celebrations, none more meaningful than Juneteenth, the commemoration of the day word of emancipation finally reached Texas. For a community founded by people who had been enslaved, that day was not an abstraction; it was the very hinge on which their freedom turned, and church fundraisers and celebrations kept the bonds of the community strong.
The Colony's people were not sealed off from the wider county — they helped build it. They cleared the land for the courthouse site, laid the masonry of buildings on the Granbury square with real craft and skill, and worked the surrounding farms. The community's earliest marked grave, that of Mary Edwards, dates to 1876, near the beginning of this free chapter. By the end of the Depression years of the 1930s most adults had moved to nearby towns, and the young often left the area entirely; the last three residents departed in the 1940s. Yet the ties held: many who had gone chose to be brought back to The Colony Cemetery for burial.
Its place in the American story
The Colony Cemetery is a rare and tangible record of one of the most consequential passages in American history — the transformation of enslaved people into free, landowning citizens. The abstract promise of emancipation is one thing; the actual building of a self-governing, property-owning Black community out of it is another, and far harder, and here the evidence still stands in the ground.
The community's members embody the paradox at the center of the Reconstruction-era South. The same hands that had been enslaved cleared the courthouse grounds and laid the masonry of the county seat — Black labor and skill quite literally built the shared civic spaces of Hood County. Recognizing that is part of recognizing the full, unedited story of how these American places came to be.
And the presence of Juneteenth here connects a single Hood County community to a commemoration that has since become a national holiday. Long before it was widely known beyond Texas, freedpeople in places like The Colony were keeping that memory alive as a living celebration. The cemetery, where descendants still choose to be buried generations after the community dispersed, is a monument to continuity — to a people who refused to let their origins, their freedom, or their home be forgotten.
If you visit
Approach this cemetery knowing what it is: not just a burial ground, but the surviving heart of a community that has otherwise vanished from the map. The houses, the fields, and Mt. Zion are gone, but the graves remain — and they are the community's autobiography, written in stone.
Look for the oldest markers, reaching back toward Mary Edwards's 1876 grave, and read the span of dates. You will notice something moving: burials that continue long after the community itself dispersed in the 1940s, because descendants who had moved away chose to come home to this ground at the end. That pattern is the whole story in miniature — a people who left but never fully let go.
When you visit the Granbury square nearby, carry this marker's knowledge with you and look at the masonry with new eyes; some of those buildings owe their walls to the skilled hands of The Colony's people. This is a quiet, reflective stop rather than a bustling attraction, and it rewards the traveler willing to slow down. Stand a while, read the names, and let the place restore a chapter of American history that was very nearly lost.
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 events
- · Juneteenth
Themes & tags
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