Bethany Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way back in the late 1800s, something shifted in Austin. The burial space that had been set aside for African Americans in the city's historic Oakwood Cemetery was no longer available.

People needed a place to lay their loved ones to rest, and so this ground, right here, became that place. That's how Bethany Cemetery came to be. The oldest recorded burial belongs to an infant named Hellen Moore, placed in this earth in 1879.

A child, barely arrived in the world, and yet in a very real way, she is this cemetery's founding story. Then in 1892, a man named C. W.

Jones purchased this land, giving it permanence, giving it a deed. A year later, in 1893, four men came together with purpose. William Holland, Henderson Rollins, Allen Bradley, and William M.

Tears formed the Bethany Cemetery Company, and for forty years, that company maintained this site. Forty years of tending and keeping. That arrangement held until 1933.

Now, a cemetery without caretakers is a sad thing, and the years between 1933 and 1976 aren't accounted for on this marker. But 1976 is when the story picks back up, because that's when members of the Bethany Cemetery Association stepped in as caretakers. They didn't just maintain it.

They improved it. Six point one eight acres of ground that had been set aside when no other ground was offered, that had held Hellen Moore since 1879, that four determined men had organized to protect. It still serves the area today.

Some ground, it turns out, holds more than the people buried in it. It holds the whole stubborn story of a community that refused to let its dead go unremembered.

What the marker says

This cemetery was established in the late 1800s when burial space set aside for African Americans in Austin's historic Oakwood Cemetery was no longer available. The oldest recorded burial is that of infant Hellen Moore in 1879. C. W. Jones purchased this land in 1892. The Bethany Cemetery Company, formed in 1893 by William Holland, Henderson Rollins, Allen Bradley and William M. Tears, maintained the site until 1933. In 1976, members of the Bethany Cemetery Association became caretakers of the 6.18-acre graveyard and improved the site, which still serves the area. (1997)