George Washington Glasscock, Sr. received a land grant for his military service with the Republic of Texas that incorporated the future settlement of Cottonwood. His will conveyed the land to his daughter, Sarah Jane Glasscock Hall, whose husband, Phidello William Hall, served as a Texas legislator from 1870 to 1874. In 1875, J.W. Love visited Cottonwood Springs near the headwaters of Green Briar Creek and homesteaded there. Well suited for farming, Cottonwood soon had several businesses, churches, a Christian academy, a post office, and two newspapers. In 1884, Sarah Jane and P.W. Hall donated land for the Cottonwood Cemetery and for Union Baptist and Methodist churches. The burial ground was already in use, with the first known graves, including infants, dating from 1877. Cottonwood was noted for frontier violence; friends George Franks and Tom Jones, who killed each other in December 1882, are buried in a common grave. P.W. Hall died in 1888 and is buried there, and Sarah Jane Hall is believed to be buried there as well, though her grave has not been identified. Prof. J.H. Yonley, founder of Cottonwood’s Yonley Polytechnic Institute, is also buried there. The cemetery includes graves of veterans dating from the Texas War for Independence. As droughts, lack of rail transportation, and a return to ranching led to Cottonwood’s population decline, the cemetery came to hold several hundred graves and preserves the generations of families who contributed to the community’s progress.