Bueche Cemetery

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of Bueche Cemetery, out in the part of Bexar County once known as Fratt. It starts with two people who crossed an ocean to put down roots in Texas soil. Abram Louis Bueche, born in 1824, and his wife Anna Barbara, born in 1825, came over from Switzerland with their family and settled in this area in 1854.

The place was called Fratt back then, and the Bueches made it their home. Now, a cemetery needs a first soul to consecrate the ground. That one, said to be the very first buried on this site, was an infant.

Frieda A. Bueche, a granddaughter of Abram Louis and Anna Barbara, died in 1892. The spot she was laid to rest sits half a mile east of the family's homestead.

That's a quiet detail, that half mile. Close enough that family could find it, far enough to mark a threshold between the living and the gone. The land itself changed hands in 1902, when a son-in-law, Chris W.

Ackermann, born in 1855, and his wife Emma, born in 1863, bought the Bueche farm. C.W. Ackermann, the marker tells us, made a deliberate choice.

He set aside this very tract of land for a cemetery. Didn't let it disappear into a cornfield or a fence line. He carved out space for memory.

Among those who came to rest here was his own son, Frank Ackermann, born in 1883. Frank became a Bexar County deputy sheriff. And he was killed in the line of duty.

The marker doesn't dress that up, and neither will I. A lawman, a son of this land, buried in the ground his father set aside for exactly this kind of keeping. Anna Barbara Bueche died in 1905.

Her husband Abram Louis lived all the way to 1921, the same year Emma Ackermann passed. Frank's father Chris W. Ackermann lived until 1936.

Frank himself died in 1937. Generations of this family, layered into one small tract in what used to be called Fratt. Descendants still maintain this site today.

They tend it because it does something a lot of ground can't claim to do. It chronicles not just the Bueche family, but the whole heritage of the Fratt community. Swiss immigrants, a farm, a deputy's badge, a patch of Bexar County set aside by one man's deliberate hand.

Some ground just holds more than dirt. This is some of that ground.

What the marker says

Swiss immigrants Abram Louis (1824-1921) and Anna Barbara (Kaderli) (1825-1905) Bueche, and family, settled in this area, known as Fratt, in 1854. Their infant granddaughter, Frieda A. Bueche, died in 1892 and is said to be the first buried at this site one-half mile east of their homestead. In 1902, when son-in-law Chris W. Ackermann (1855-1936) and wife, Emma (1863-1921), bought the Bueche farm, C.W. set aside this tract of land for a cemetery. Among those laid to rest here is their son, Frank (1883-1937), Bexar Co. deputy sheriff, killed in the line of duty. Descendants maintain this site that chronicles the heritage of the Bueche family and the Fratt community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002