John Peter Smith_Oakwood Cemetery Founder

Smith's gifts make more sense beside his holdings. The Handbook of Texas says he owned 1,000 acres of Tarrant County in 1865, had doubled his land within five years, and by the early 1880s held city lots worth more than $50,000, reportedly the largest landowner in Fort Worth. Out of that estate came ground for the Oakwood, Calvary and Trinity cemeteries, parks, churches and a hospital. Oakwood was deeded in 1879 after the older Pioneers Rest cemetery had filled. The public hospital that bears his name is dated to 1906, five years after his death.

What the plaque says

John Peter Smith_Oakwood Cemetery Founder Pioneer area settler John Peter Smith (1831-1901), who donated twenty acres for the establishment of this cemetery, came to Fort Worth from Kentucky in 1853. He served the community as a teacher, clerk, surveyor, and attorney, and became a noted civic leader. Although opposed to the secession of Texas during the Civil War, Smith raised a company of Tarrant County men for the Confederacy and joined Sibley's Brigade in 1861. While in the war he served in the unsuccessful invasion of New Mexico, the recapture of Galveston in 1863, and was severely wounded at Donaldsville, Louisiana, later that year. After the war Smith returned to Fort Worth, where he became involved in the development of the city. He helped organize a bank, gas light company, and street railway. He also gave land for city parks, cemeteries, including this site in 1879, and a hospital, later named in his honor. In 1882 he became mayor and directed the establishment of many public services, such as the school system and the water department. In 1901 Smith died in St. Louis, Missouri, while on a promotional trip for Fort Worth. He is buried in a section of Oakwood Cemetery that is part of the original acreage he donated to the city. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 1.3 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 1.3 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 1.7 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.2 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Oakwood Cemetery — steps away
• Euday Louis Bowman — steps away
• General Thomas N. Waul, C.S.A. — steps away
• Governor Charles A. Culberson — steps away