Oak Hill Cemetery

Two of the public men buried here came to Goliad from far off. James Webb, a Virginian and former federal judge in Florida, served the Republic of Texas as attorney general and secretary of state; Mexico refused to receive him as minister in 1841. He died in 1856 on his way to hold court here, and Webb County bears his name. Pryor Lea, a former Tennessee congressman and a slaveholder, arrived in 1846 to promote a railroad to Aransas Bay that was never finished, sat in the 1861 Secession Convention and died in Goliad in 1879.

What the plaque says

Oak Hill Cemetery The earliest headstone in this community burial ground marks the grave of Ann Elizabeth Hunter, who died in 1843. A city ordinance designated the site as Oak Hill Cemetery on January 10, 1854. Located in the part of Goliad called "College Hill", the cemetery contains almost 1,000 known graves. The city maintained the site until 1882, when the Oak Hill Cemetery Association was formed. No new lots have been available for sale since the early 1900s. Many prominent citizens of early Texas are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goliad State Park and Historic Site — 1.1 mi
  Mission Espíritu Santo on the San Antonio River, a mission ranch whose herds seeded Texas cattle country, rebuilt from ruin by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
• Presidio La Bahía — 1.8 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 1.8 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 2.0 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Goliad — 0.2 mi
• St. Stephen's Episcopal Church — 0.3 mi
• William Rubio Carbajal — 0.3 mi
• Goliad — 0.3 mi