DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. This is Cementerio San Antonio de Padua, out in Aransas County. Now, according to local lore — and those three words are doin' a lot of heavy liftin' here — a man named George Lewis made one of the more unusual bargains you'll ever hear tied to a piece of ground.
The year was sometime before 1895, and Lewis offered up one-half acre of his land to the Hispanic citizens of the area, to be used as a cemetery. Simple enough gift, maybe. Except for the condition.
He wanted to be buried in the center of it. Right there in the middle. You have to wonder what kind of man negotiates his eternal resting place like a land deal — but there it is.
George Lewis, born 1859, died 1895, and if local lore holds, he got exactly what he asked for. The people around him got their ground, and he got his spot at the heart of it. Not a bad arrangement, depending on how you look at it.
The cemetery began filling up well before any paperwork changed hands. Handmade stones mark burials reaching back into the 19th century, though the first recorded deed wasn't signed until 1933. Decades of wind and rain have done what wind and rain always do — worn many of those stones down until the names are gone, the dates erased, the stories silenced.
Then came 1940, and an influenza epidemic that took a number of children. That's the kind of sentence that deserves a moment of quiet before you move on. Children.
Gone to an epidemic. Laid to rest in this half-acre of donated ground. Veterans are here too — men and women who served in U.S. and international conflicts, all of them interred beneath this Aransas County sky.
And then there's the statue. San Antonio himself, holding a child, crafted in Mexico and carried across the border by the local priest, brought specifically for placement in an open chapel on the cemetery grounds. It stands there now, revered — that's the word the marker uses, revered — by the families of those who rest here.
A figure of a saint, holding a child, in a place where children are buried. Some things don't need embellishment. The ground said enough.
What the marker says
According to local lore, George Lewis (1859-1895) donated one-half acre of land at this site to the Hispanic citizens of the area for use as a cemetery, provided that he be buried in the center of the land. Handmade stones indicate burials dating from the 19th century; the first recorded deed was signed in 1933. Years of wind and rain have rendered many stones illegible. A number of children who died in an influenza epidemic in 1940 and many veterans of U.S. and international conflicts are interred here. A statue of San Antonio holding a child, crafted in Mexico, was brought across the border by the local priest for placement in an open chapel on the cemetery grounds. It is revered by the families of those interred here. (1998)