Hodge's Bend Cemetery

Hodge was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and after the Revolution read law in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, where his seven children were born. He moved west through Kentucky and served as a magistrate in Arkansas before meeting Austin. In Texas he served his district as comisario and alcalde. His plantation was a favorite stopping place for William B. Travis, James B. Bonham, Erastus (Deaf) Smith and unknown travelers alike. In the spring of 1836, while his sons and sons-in-law served in the Revolution, he led the women, children and the family's enslaved people to safety.

What the plaque says

Hodge's Bend Cemetery A veteran of "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion's South Carolina brigade during the American Revolution, Alexander Hodge (b. 1760) brought his family to Texas in 1825. Hodge was prominent among the "Old Three Hundred" settlers; his sons fought in the Texas Revolution. His 1828 land grant from Stephen F. Austin, named Hodge's Bend, included the site for this cemetery. First grave here was that of his wife Ruth, who died in 1831. Hodge was buried here in 1836. The cemetery contains about 75 graves, including those of Hodge's descendants and other early settlers in the area. The last burial here was in 1942. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 17 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 17 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 17 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 18 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Sugar Land Independent School District No. 17 — 2.2 mi
• Sugar Land First United Methodist Church — 2.7 mi
• Stafford's Point — 4.9 mi
• Dismounted Texas Cavalry — 5.8 mi