Oxford Cemetery

Settlers reached the Oxford area in the mid-1850s, and before Johnson came it was home to Bedford Academy, which drew students from across the county. Johnson named the town for his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi, and hired Knight Stith to survey the townsite, and a post office opened in 1880 with George M. Wilson as postmaster. After some drunken young men at a dance threw a cat into a large pot of coffee, Oxford was sometimes called Cat Town. Once a trade center for cotton and cattle, it declined in the early 1900s and lost its post office by 1924.

What the plaque says

Oxford Cemetery The Oxford community was founded in 1880 when Confederate veteran A. J. Johnson came to Llano County and laid out the townsite. In 1881, a burial ground was established near this site for the use of the families of Oxford. Burials date from 1883, although some of the graves that were moved from a neighboring cemetery bear earlier death dates. Among those interred there are the town's founder, A. J. Johnson (1832-1912); and James R. Moss (1843-1924), who captained the Packsaddle Mountain fight, an 1873 battle that drove raiding Indians out of Llano County. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 9.9 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 10 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 21 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 22 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.

More markers nearby

• Nine Miles West is the Enchanted Rock — 4.2 mi
• Six Mile School — 6.0 mi
• Six Mile Cemetery — 6.2 mi
• O'Henry School Building — 9.8 mi