Shady Grove Cemetery, Wood County, Winnsboro, Texas

Shady Grove Cemetery is an open landscape cemetery and one of the oldest burial grounds in Wood County, having first served pioneer settlers of the Shady Grove farming community. One of the earliest area settlers was Reuben Elledge, who brought his family here in 1845. Elledge figured prominently in the development of Wood County as a Commissioner and Chief Justice (County Judge) in 1850. Elledge donated land to the community for a school and a Methodist Episcopal Church, South. One acre of the Elledge land was later set aside for the cemetery.

The earliest known gravesite in Shady Grove Cemetery, unmarked except for a tree for many years, was for young Bobby Scoggins, who drowned in 1855. Also buried here are Elledge as well as three-term Wood County Sheriff, John Boyd, and many veterans of military conflicts dating to the Civil War.

Expanded throughout the years, Shady Grove Cemetery is a reminder of early settlement in the area. Features include rock cairns, decorative fencing, ornate stone carvings, old curbed plots, obelisks, and Woodmen of the World monuments. The Methodist Church, later having become a United Methodist Church, was disbanded in 1993, and it is now used for funerals and for annual events such as Memorial Day and the old-time Pie & Box Supper.