Harwood Cemetery

The town is named for Thomas Moore Harwood, a Gonzales lawyer who worked with Thomas W. Peirce to acquire land and build the railway. Before it, a store and post office called Mule Creek stood a mile west on the stage and cattle trail from Gonzales to Lockhart and Austin. Harwood reached 350 people in 1892. It incorporated in 1913, apparently to keep a saloon out, and held no further election. Its gins sometimes ran around the clock in harvest, and in 1935 Walter Huff built an air-cooled monoplane in an old blacksmith shop here.

What the plaque says

Harwood Cemetery The town of Harwood was founded in 1875 as a stop on the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railroad. Land was designated for a cemetery when town lots were platted. The oldest marked grave is that of I. M. Shelton, a Civil War veteran who died April 14, 1877. According to local tradition, Shelton was struck by lightning as the worked on the railroad. Other veterans interred here are from the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, Spanish-American war, World War I, World War II, and Korea. A cemetery association was formed in 1957 to maintain the site. Texas sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 18 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 30 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• McNeil Cemetery — 5.9 mi
• Edgar B. Davis, Oil Pioneer-Philanthropist — 8.8 mi
• City of Luling — 8.9 mi
• Zedler's Mills — 9.0 mi