DUANE
Duane's take
The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker at Bosqueville Cemetery — and this one's worth your full attention. Out here in McLennan County, the ground started accepting its dead as early as 1850. Ten acres, given by a man named Little Berry White — and that name alone ought to tell you something about the particular character of the Texas frontier — set aside for two purposes: a school and a cemetery.
The kind of place where the living came to learn and the dead came to rest, all on the same donated plot of ground. By 1853 and into 1854, a log schoolhouse was standing on that site. The Methodist and Baptist churches both used it as a meeting place, which means on any given week that building might hold a spelling lesson, a sermon, or both.
Communities out here couldn't afford to be precious about such things. Now, not every grave in Bosqueville Cemetery has a marker. Some of those unmarked resting places, the official record tells us plainly, were the graves of enslaved people.
It deserves to be said without dressing it up: human beings who were held in bondage lie in that ground, their names unrecorded, their stories largely unrecoverable. That silence in the earth is part of this place's history too. The first marked graves came in 1856.
Two of them. David Smith Kornegay — a veteran of San Jacinto — and his mother-in-law, Bridget Lamb McGary. San Jacinto.
That name carries its own thunder in Texas, and Kornegay had been there. He wasn't the only one buried at Bosqueville with that distinction, either. Another San Jacinto soldier, Alexander McKinza, rests in that same ground.
And then there are the thirty-one veterans of the Confederate Army also buried here. Thirty-one. This cemetery absorbed generation after generation of men who had seen war in one form or another.
In 1908, the heirs of Dr. N.J.W. Wortham gave an additional one and a half acres to the cemetery, expanding what Little Berry White had started more than a half-century before.
Ten acres given in faith. A log schoolhouse. Unmarked graves and marked ones.
Two soldiers of San Jacinto. Thirty-one more veterans. A gift of land passed down through a doctor's heirs.
Bosqueville Cemetery didn't just hold the dead — it held the shape of an entire community, pressed into the soil of McLennan County, one burial at a time.
What the marker says
Burials began here as early as 1850 on 10 acres given by Little Berry White for a school and cemetery. A log schoolhouse at this site in 1853-54 served the Methodist and Baptist Churches as a meeting place. Some of the unmarked graves were those of slaves. The first marked graves, dated 1856, were those of David Smith Kornegay, a veteran of San Jacinto, and his mother-in-law, Bridget Lamb McGary. Another San Jacinto soldier, Alexander McKinza, and thirty-one veterans of the confederate army are buried here. In 1908, heirs of Dr. N.J.W. Wortham gave 1.5 acres. (1979)