Wooten Cemetery
Telegraph, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Typical of burial sites chosen by early Texas Hill Country pioneers, Wooten Cemetery was established by April 1880 when one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson was buried. His headstone is the earliest grave marker in the cemetery. His mother, P. Jane Jackson, died in 1881 and is interred nearby. Other notable graves include a family group believed to be tuberculosis victims. The plot of the Allsup family is also prominent, as is the grave of Civil War veteran Simon Lee Wooten (1830-1896), for whom the cemetery is named, who came to Texas from Georgia upon the death of the Old South. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Like many Hill Country burial grounds, Wooten Cemetery began with a single sorrow—the 1880 grave of one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson, whose headstone remains its oldest. His mother followed the next year, and among the graves lies a family thought to have died of tuberculosis, a reminder of frontier medicine's limits. The cemetery takes its name from Simon Lee Wooten, a Civil War veteran who came to Texas from Georgia "upon the death of the Old South."
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the hard realities of Hill Country pioneer life and the migration of defeated Southerners westward to rebuild after the Civil War.
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Related people
- · Cornelius Clay Jackson
- · Simon Lee Wooten
Themes & tags
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