Columbus' Old City Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker for Columbus' Old City Cemetery is what I'm going on here, so let me tell it straight. Now, when you pull up to a cemetery and the oldest headstone you can read is dated 1853 — and even that isn't the beginning — you know you're standing on ground that has been holding secrets longer than most Texas towns have been standing. The date of the earliest burial here is simply not known.

The earth took that knowledge and kept it. What we do know is that by 1870, the seven acres of this site were deeded to the city of Columbus as an already-existing graveyard. Already existing.

Somebody had been burying their people here before the city even had official claim to the land. That's the kind of place this is. Seven quiet acres with a very long memory.

And the names sleeping beneath that ground — well, that's where the story gets something worth stopping for. Benjamin Beason is here. W.

B. DeWees is here. Both of them counted among Austin's Old Three Hundred, the original colonists, the ones who came before coming was fashionable or safe.

DeWees, the marker tells us, was the founder of Columbus itself — so the town and its cemetery share a founder, resting together at the end of it all. Dilue Rose is buried here too, the historian who chronicled the 1830s, and her husband, Sheriff Ira Harris, beside her. General Augustus Jones, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Texas War for Independence, lies here — a man who fought in two different wars for two different kinds of freedom.

Dr. John G. Logue is here, known as the founder of the first drugstore in Texas, back in 1845 — which means somewhere in this ground rests the man who first thought Texas ought to have a proper place to fill a prescription.

The Reverend Jacob Scherer is here, the man who founded Colorado College in 1857. And then there are the Confederate soldiers — many of them, unnamed in the count — and the victims of the yellow fever epidemic of 1873, taken fast and hard by a sickness that did not much care who it chose. Seven acres.

One oldest readable stone from 1853. One deed from 1870. And enough history beneath the grass to fill a library — most of it still unread, the way old cemeteries tend to prefer it.

What the marker says

Date of earliest burial is not known: oldest headstone, 1853. Site (7 A.) was deeded to the city in 1870 as an existent graveyard. Burials here included Benjamin Beason, one of Austin's "Old 300" colonists: W. B. DeWees, also in "Old 300," founder of Columbus; 1830s historian Dilue Rose and husband, Sheriff Ira Harris; Gen. Augustus Jones, War of 1812 and Texas War for Independence veteran; Dr. John G. Logue, known as founder of the first drugstore in Texas, 1845; The Rev. Jacob Scherer, founder, in 1857, of Colorado College; many Confederate soldiers; and victims of 1873 yellow fever epidemic.