Antioch Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. You're rolling along the Gotier Trace now, and if you glance out toward that cemetery, you might think it's always been right there. It hasn't.

That's the first thing worth knowing about Antioch Cemetery. It has a history before it had this address. The cemetery was originally located a mile and a quarter northwest of here, and it was already in use before the Civil War.

Think on that a moment. People were being laid to rest in that ground before the country tore itself apart and put itself back together. Then, in 1882, the cemetery and a church-school building associated with it were both moved to this site on the Gotier Trace.

The whole operation, graves and all, relocated here. The earliest marked grave on this ground belongs to an infant named Benno Goerner, and that date traces back to that same year, 1882. A child, the first name chiseled into stone on this new ground.

That sets the tone. Among the nearly one hundred graves here you'll find pioneer families of Bastrop County, Confederate soldiers who served in the Civil War, and then, the ones that stay with you, the victims of disease. A majority of them children.

This cemetery is, the marker tells us plainly, the only remaining physical evidence of a once thriving farming community. The community itself is gone. The church-school building, gone.

What remains is this ground, these names, and the quiet fact that someone thought it worth moving everything here rather than leaving it behind. Sometimes the most a place can do is hold its dead. Antioch Cemetery has been doing that for a long time.

What the marker says

This cemetery is the only remaining physical evidence of a once thriving farming community. Originally located 1.25 miles northwest of here, it was in use before the Civil War. The cemetery and an associated church-school building were moved to this site on the Gotier Trace in 1882. The earliest marked grave, that of infant Benno Goerner, dates to that year. Among the nearly 100 graves are those of pioneer families of Bastrop County; veterans, including Confederate soldiers of the Civil War; and victims of many diseases, a majority of them children. (1996)