Ozro Cemetery

Ozro's name is a small mystery. The Handbook of Texas says it was named either for Ozro High, a son of an early leader, or for Ozro Cheatham, son of T. O. Cheatham. The post office opened in 1898 with James O. Hightower as postmaster and ran until 1906, when mail was routed through Venus in Johnson County. A school operated from 1915 to 1944 before consolidating with the Maypearl district. The plaque calls the earlier village Nation Town and says the cemetery is all that remains of it; the Handbook's last note on Ozro mentions the cemetery too.

What the plaque says

Ozro Cemetery In 1858 J.P. Gilmore and Richard D. Graves gave land for Pleasant Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, south, and for this burial ground. The earliest marked graves date from 1870. J.H.L. Jackson donated additional land in 1895. At that time, the cemetery served Nation Town, a thriving community with several stores and a school. The village was renamed Ozro in 1898, when that post office opened. After the International & Great Northern Railroad reached this area in 1902, many residents moved to Maypearl, and Ozro declined. Today the cemetery is the only remnant of its past. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 21 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Hill County Courthouse — 23 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

More markers nearby

• Auburn Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Maypearl Cemetery — 2.6 mi
• Greathouse Community, Church, and Cemetery — 6.8 mi
• Town of Grandview — 8.6 mi