HISTORY OF THE WELLS CEMETERY AT

ELM FLAT IN HOOD COUNTY, TEXAS

The land, 5 acres, was deeded to Hood County for use as cemetery about 1885, by Evelyn Stone (Anderson) Wells. She also deeded to the County 2 acres of land several hundred yards north of the cemetery for a church and school. This is the land where Elm Flat School house stood. The school building was moved from Shady Grove to the Elm Flat location. This is where my father and mother both attended school.

To give the history of the Wells Cemetery is to give a bit of the history of the Great Lady that created it. Aunt Bettie, or Grannie Wells as she was known, was a daughter of William Thornton Stone and Maris Catherine Davis. Grannie Wells was born in 1871 in Copiah County, Mississippi. She had one brother and one sister. Mr. Stone died in 1855, and shortly after his death, Maris, the three babies, her two sisters and their families, a brother, and her aged parents, Thomas and Elisabeth Davis, left by wagon train for Texas. Grimes County was their destination, where they lived many years.

When Elizabeth Stone was grown, she married Dr. Calvin Anderson around 1846, in Grimes County. They had four children. Dr. Anderson was called into the Civil War and was wounded in action and died shortly after.

Elizabeth then married Thomas D. Wells on August 6, 1874 in Madison County. They came to Hood County and bought most of the land in the Walters Bend of the Brazos River.

Tom and Bettie had one son born May 1, 1875 and another born October 11, 1876. Both babies died a few days apart in November, 1877, and were buried together on the hill about 300 yards north of the log house that was their home.

When Bettie was a small child, her grandparents gave her a colored slave, Lucinda Wells. When the Civil War was over and all the slaves were freed, Grannie Wells told Lucinda that the President had freed all the slaves and she could go home. Lucinda said, "Missie, I don't know what you mean I can go home. This is my home, the only home I know. I want to stay here in my home." So Lucinda stayed with Grandma and looked after William Alvin Wells (my father) until the last. He was 11 years old when she died in 1889. She was buried at the head of the two babies' grave in the Wells Cemetery.

Next to be buried on the hill was George C. Cox, Bettie's grandson, who died in 1891 when he was 21 years old. He was buried at the foot of the two babies' grave. These were the start of the Wells Cemetery.

A lot of Grandma's friends and neighbors started burying their dead there, like Carters, Armstrong, Bryants, Durants, Jones, Williamsons, and many others not mentioned.

The next Wells to be buried there was my father William Alvin Wells in 1984. I am Floyd Martin Wells, born October 7, 1911, near the Wells Cemetery.

At this writing, there are 62 graves with markers and many more marked only with fieldstones and no identification.

The grandson of Elizabeth Evelyn Stone Anderson Wells:

HOOD COUNTY TEXAS GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY