South Carolina native Parrott E. McNeese received land in this area in 1846 for serving in the Texas Revolution of 1835-36. He and his wife, Mary Allcorn McNeese, had three surviving children, including George Washington McNeese, born in 1840, who first came to Hill County in 1861. After serving as a Confederate Army 1st Lt. during the Civil War, George farmed his inherited 500 acres and later expanded his holdings, raising cotton and corn as well as mules and horses. He married Sallie Poteet in 1869, and six of their nine children reached adulthood. After their infant son died in 1873, George and Sallie McNeese deeded 7.7 acres for a public school and graveyard, first called McNeese Cemetery. In 1882, George and other settlers brought German families from Brenham to the Cottonwood community, which included a mercantile store, cotton gin, and school. George and Sallie both died in 1909 and were buried in a family plot near their infant son. Veterans from the Texas Revolution to the Korean War are buried here, including William J. Gray, who served in Erastus Deaf Smith's Ranger Company in 1837 and fostered 14 orphans, among them five nieces and nephews, and World War II veterans Altus Manuel Horn, a prisoner of war and Bronze Star recipient, and Ruth B. Cotton Horn of the Woman's Army Corps. More than 300 known graves, many unmarked, contain markers of concrete, fieldstone, granite, marble, sandstone, steel, ceramic photographs, and family plot fencing. After years of neglected maintenance, preservation efforts began in 1979, and a group that formally organized in 1991 as the Cottonwood Cemetery Association worked to preserve this historic burial ground, the only remaining indication of the once-thriving Cottonwood community.