Tarrant County TXGenWeb - Hood Cemetery

Tarrant County TXGenWeb

Hood Cemetery

by Michael E. Patterson
Member, Tarrant County Historical Commission
© 1981

The Hood Cemetery is located in North Tarrant County, on the Thomas M. Hood survey, east of Peytonville Avenue about 1.8 miles north of Texas Farm to Market Road 1709, and is today within the city limits of Southlake, Texas. Named for Mr. Hood, it contains the graves of many settlers who came to Tarrant County during the first ten years of permanent Anglo settlement in the area. It is forgotten by all but a few of the oldest residents, and may not be seen from or reached by any county road.

The cemetery property was first taken from the public domain on September 4, 1854, when the State patented the 640 acre survey to Thomas M. Hood.¹ Mr. Hood was born about 1823 in South Carolina,² probably in Greenville County.³ He was the son of Morgan Hood (born ca.1785 , died ca.1848), who died in Texas.⁴ Thomas moved with his family to Buncombe County, North Carolina before 1830, and to Van Buren County, Missouri before 1840.⁵ He first came to Texas as a single man with his father before April 29, 1845,⁶ but returned to Van Buren County, Missouri for a time where he married Mary G. Throop on April 23, 1846.⁷ She was born in Missouri about 1832, and was the daughter of Francis Throop (died 1850) and his wife, Hannah (died 1851). Both Francis Throop (a soldier in the War of 1812) and his wife died in Tarrant County and are buried in unmarked and unlocated graves.⁸ In September 1848 Thomas and Mary Hood joined the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church in present-day Southlake.⁹

Mary G. (Throop) Hood died quite young, about 1853, leaving one daughter, Louisa Elizabeth Hood, who later married Oliff Perry McDonald.¹⁰ Thomas Hood was married second, about 1853, to Maryetta Hall.¹¹ By his second marriage he was survived by two children, Sarah Emeline Hood (1854-1939), the wife of James A. Freeman; and William Berry Hood (died 1940), who married Rachael Caroline Freeman.¹²

Thomas M. Hood died in February or March, 1859. His wife, Maryetta Hood, died before him.¹³ Tradition says they died during an epidemic, and were buried in the Hood Cemetery.¹⁴Their graves are unmarked.

There is a persistent legend in the community concerning the origin of the cemetery, though no documentation exists for it. According to the story, a suspected thief was hung from a large bent oak which stood on the present cemetery lot. The legend recites that after the man was hung, area residents found him several days later, still hanging, and dug a hole under him. Into the hole they put a sal t barrel. Then they cut the rope, letting the body fall into the barrel. There they buried him. When Mr. Bradley, present owner of the property around the cemetery, moved there, a depression under the tree was pointed out to him as the thief's sunken grave. The tree was killed during a large brush fire which swept across the area about 1956, and was cut down a few years later.¹⁵

The cemetery occupies one acre of land. It does not appear on any plat map in the county records. It first appears in a deed dated 1871 from O.P. McDonald and his wife, Louisa E. McDonald (Thomas Hood's daughter) to J. A. Moore. Its precise location, however, has never been described in relation to the tract in which it sits. All subsequent deeds since 1871 describe its location thus: "...[this tract] containing 61 acres of land, reserving one square acre of said land covering the grave yard for burial purposes."¹⁶

Approximately thirty-eight headstones with readable inscriptions of any sort may be seen; at least twice that number are marked with unlettered fieldstones. Several more legible fieldstones will probably be found when the cemetery is cleaned. The earliest marked grave is that of Urias Martin (May 15, 1795 - 0ctober 22, 1855). The numbers of burials by decades are as follows (data from readable markers only): 1850's--2; 1860's--6; 1870's--5; 1880's--5; 1890's--4; 1900's--4; 1910's--3; 1920's--2; 1930's--0; 1940's--1; 1950's-present-none.¹⁷ The last two persons buried in the cemetery were David Houston Jimeson (1885-1948) and his wife, Fathey Jane (Castleberry) Jimeson (1893-1955). Both lie in unmarked graves.¹⁸

At least one Union Civil War veteran, Josiah Hardin Jimeson (1836-1928) lies buried in the cemetery,¹⁹as do several Confederate soldiers. Many of the plot's markers are handmade of local red sandstone, and several of the earlier burials are marked with cut sandstone cairns.

The Tarrant County Historical Commission wishes to mark this historic cemetery to call the attention of the community to its importance as a link to the community's earliest days. It is hoped that the recognition afforded it by this marker will interest the descendants of those buried there in providing for some sort of continuing care for the graves. Although the Tarrant County Historical Commission's Cemetery Preservation Committee began working in the plot in early 1981, no regular cemetery association or group of descendants presently cares for the plot.

February 10, 1981

Footnotes

1. Fort Worth and Tarrant County Land Title Office, "Abstract of Title to a 61 acre tract, a part of the Thomas M. Hood survey," p. 1, original in possession of Harry R. Bradley, Southlake, Texas.

2. Tarrant County, Texas, 1850 Federal Census.

3. Greenville County, South Carolina, 1810 and 1820 Federal Census. Morgan Hood is shown as a resident of Greenville Co., South Carolina in 1820. An "M. Hood" is enumerated in the same county in 1810.

4. Buncombe County, North Carolina, 1830 Federal Census; Van Buren County, Missouri, 1840 Federal Census; Seymour V. Conner, The Peters Colony of Texas, pp. 284-285; Tarrant County, Texas, 1850 Federal Census.

In the 1830 census, Morgan Hood was aged 40-50 years. In 1840, he was aged 50-60 years. He arrived in Texas by April, 1845, and was dead by the time of the 1850 census of Tarrant County, Texas.

5. Buncombe Co., N.C., 1830 census: Van Buren Co., Mo., 1840 census.

6. Lamar County, Texas, Marriage Records.

Thomas M. Hood's sister, Dosha Hood, married Jonathan Foster in Lamar County, Texas on April 29, 1845. Conner's Peters Colony states that Thomas M. Hood entered the colony as a single man, before July 1, 1845.

7. Van Buren County, Missouri, Marriage Records.

8. Pearl Foster O'Donnell, Medlin Clan and Kin, (private printing, no date), pp. 66-67.

9. Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, Minutes. Microfilm copy at Ft. Worth Public Library, Fort Worth, Texas.

10. Tarrant County, Texas, District Court Records, March Term, 1871, "Petition and Report of H. O. Throop, Guardian of the minor heir L. E. Hood, Minor heir of T. M. Hood, deceased," in "Abstract..." p. 21.

11. Hood Jenkins (grandson of William Berry Hood), correspondence with Pearl Foster 0'Donnell , Fort Worth, Texas, originals in possession of Mrs. O'Donnell.

12. ibid.

13. Tarrant County, Texas, Will and Probate Papers of Thomas M. Hood, 1859, in "Abstract...," pp. 2-5.

On April 14, 1859, William Wan Hall filed a petition with the Tarrant County Probate Court asking that he be appointed guardian of Thomas M. Hood's three children. In it, he also states: "Petitioner would state that the mother of said children is also dead."

In the estate papers of William Wan Hall (decd. prior to Oct. 27, 1862), abstracted in "Tarrant County Estates" and reprinted in Footprints (May, 1977), reference is made to a payment made in 1864 to the "widow and heirs of T. M. Hood." This statement is probably in error in regard to the widow.

14. Pearl Foster O'Donnell, in interview with Michael E. Patterson at Fort Worth, Texas, June 8, 1975.

15. Harry R. Bradley, in interview with Michael E. Patterson at Southlake, Texas, February 7, 1981.

A lifelong resident of the community, Normalene (Mills) Muir, recalled during a Feb. 8, 1981 interview with Patterson that indeed a suspected thief had been hung near the cemetery, but that his grave was not within Hood Cemetery and was rather alone nearby.

16. Tarrant County, Texas, Deed Records, Vol. 38, p. 18.

17. Michael E. Patterson, "Inventory of Hood Cemetery," October 15, 1972, copy in possession of Patterson.

18. Frances Christian, Grapevine, Texas, personal files of Jimeson family data.

19. ibid.

Bibliography

Bradley, Harry R. Interview with Patterson at Southlake, Texas, February 7, 1981.

Buncombe County, North Carolina. Federal Census. 1830.

Christian, Frances. Grapevine, Texas. Personal Files of Jimeson family data.

Conner, Seymour V. The Peters Colony of Texas. Austin, Texas: The Texas State Historical Association, 1959.

Fort Worth Genealogical Society. Footprints. Various issues.

Fort Worth and Tarrant County Land Title Office. "Abstract of Title to a 61 acre tract, a part of the Thomas M. Hood survey." Original in possession of Harry R. Bradley, Southlake, Texas.

Greenville County, South Carolina. Federal Census. 1810, 1820.

Jenkins, Hood. (Grandson of William Berry Hood). Correspondence with Pearl Foster 0'Donnell, Fort Worth, Texas. Originals in possession of Mrs. O'Donnell.

Lamar County, Texas. Marriage Records.

Lonesome Dove Baptist Church. Minutes. Microfilm at Fort Worth Public Library, Fort Worth, Texas.

Muir, Normalene (Mills). Interview with Patterson at Southlake, Texas, February 8, 1981.

O'Donnell, Pearl Foster. Interview with Patterson at Fort Worth, Texas, June 8, 1975.

___________________, Medlin Clan and Kin. Private printing, no date, pp. 66-67.

Patterson, Michael E. "Inventory of Hood Cemetery." October 15, 1972, copy in possession of Patterson.

Tarrant County, Texas. Deed Records.

District Court Records.

Estate Records. Reprinted in Footprints.

Federal Census. 1850.

Probate Records.

Van Buren County, Missouri. Federal Census. 1840.

Marriage Records.

This page was last modified 17 July 2005.