Woods Prairie Cemetery
West Point, Fayette County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Woods Prairie Cemetery Zadock Woods (d. 1842), veteran of the War of 1812 and one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, brought his family to settle in this area in 1828. He built a fortified home on land deeded to his son, Montraville, and established a cemetery here for his family and neighbors. The first burial is said to be that of a ranch hand. Another alleged early grave belongs to Stephen Cottle, brother of Woods' wife Minerva. He died c. 1828, and tradition holds he is buried north of his sister's plot; hers is the first marked grave, dating to 1839. Zadock Woods himself is not buried at the cemetery. Killed at the Dawson Massacre of 1842, he is buried at Monument Hill State Historic Site in La Grange, in a vault with others who fell with him. A veteran of the massacre who survived capture and then imprisonment in Mexico is buried here, though. That survivor, Joseph C. Robinson, lived until 1861 and was honored here with a Texas Centennial marker in 1936. To protect and preserve the cemetery property, which is the resting place of many early Texas pioneers, J.A. Darby, M.E. Darby, T.C. Moore and A.W. Young purchased the site in 1875 and deeded it to their heirs. The pioneer graveyard serves as a reminder of the area's early history. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Zadock Woods, a War of 1812 veteran and one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, settled here in 1828, built a fortified home, and started this cemetery for family and neighbors. Woods himself died in the 1842 Dawson Massacre and lies elsewhere, but a fellow captive who survived imprisonment in Mexico, Joseph C. Robinson, rests here beneath a 1936 Texas Centennial marker. Pioneers bought and preserved the graveyard in 1875 to protect the resting place of the area's earliest families.
Why it matters
The cemetery ties one Fayette County ground to the founding colonists of Anglo Texas and to the bloody border struggles of the young Republic.
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Related people
- · Zadock Woods
- · Joseph C. Robinson
- · Stephen Cottle
Related events
- · Dawson Massacre
- · Old Three Hundred colony
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Wood's Fort
West Point, TX
From 1828 to 1842 the fortified residence of Zadock Woods served the colonists of this vicinity as a refuge against Indian attacks during the turbulent years of Mexican Texas and the Republic. Woods, a veteran of the War of 1812 and one of Stephen F. Austin's original "Old Three Hundred" colonists, was by then an old man. He was killed at the Dawson Massacre on September 18, 1842, remembered as the oldest man to fall in that fight against invading Mexican forces.
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Henry Mordorff, born in 1817, was among the volunteers who fought at San Jacinto in 1836, the battle that won Texas its independence. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, on the centennial of that victory, to honor his service and grave near Smithville.
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Simon Peter Ford came to Texas in 1830 as a teenager and, at twenty, fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in Captain William Wood's company—the decisive 1836 clash that secured Texas independence. He lived on into the 1890s, a link between the revolutionary generation and the settled state. Texas erected his marker in 1962, its Star and Wreath honoring a veteran of the founding fight.
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