DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at First Street Cemetery has to say — and friends, this one's worth slowing down for. Waco's oldest public cemetery has a story that keeps going long after you'd expect it to be finished. It starts simply enough: on April 16, 1852, a man named George W.
Edwards conveyed five acres — land he'd acquired from Jacob de Cordova — to the citizens of Waco. For a graveyard. Five acres set aside for the community to lay its people to rest.
And what a community it was. Veterans, Masons, Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, Knights and Daughters of Tabor, the Court of Calanthe — First Street Cemetery became the resting place for members of Waco's early and diverse population. Over time, additional acreage came in from the Fraternity of Bosque Lodge No. 92 and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, so the grounds grew.
But here's where the story starts getting complicated. Fences were never erected to establish a set boundary. Accurate burial records were not kept.
And by the 1890s, the situation had gotten tangled enough that burials were being dug in tiers — which, as you might imagine, disturbed the burials that had come before. The place that was meant to be a final rest was anything but undisturbed. Then came the neglect.
Years of it. Until 1968, when the Waco city council voted to act — relocating graves and markers from the lower terrace of the cemetery up to the upper terrace. The lower terrace was then turned into a recreational campground called Fort Fisher Park.
People came to camp on ground that had once held the dead. The campground closed in 2000. Then in 2007, construction began on the Texas Ranger Company F Headquarters and Education Center, right there in that lower terrace.
And during that construction, something came to light that changed the whole story: remains were discovered. What the 1968 relocation had actually moved was only the headstones. The people themselves had never gone anywhere.
Between 2007 and 2010, excavated remains were reinterred at Rosemound Cemetery. The city of Waco finally reckoned fully with what lay beneath. And on December 7, 2010, the city council rededicated First Street Cemetery — a formal act meant to ensure that what rested there would not be disturbed again.
It's now designated both a Historic Texas Cemetery and a State Antiquities Landmark. The oldest public cemetery in Waco took nearly a century and a half to get the protection it deserved. Some stories don't end — they just finally find their way to a proper resting place.
What the marker says
As the oldest public cemetery in Waco, First Street Cemetery is the resting place for members of Waco's early and diverse community. Burials include veterans, Masons, Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, Knights and Daughters of Tabor and Court of Calanthe. On April 16, 1852, George W. Edwards conveyed five acres of a tract acquired from Jacob de Cordova to the citizens of Waco for a graveyard. Additional acreage was conveyed to the city from the Fraternity of Bosque Lodge No. 92 and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Fences were never erected to establish a set boundary and accurate burials records were not kept. In the 1890s, burials were dug in tiers which resulted in the disturbance of previous burials. In 1968, after years of neglect, the Waco city council voted to relocate graves and/or markers in the lower terrace of the cemetery to the upper terrace. The lower terrace became a recreational campground known as Fort Fisher Park. In 2000, the campground was closed. In 2007, construction on the Texas Ranger Company "F" Headquarters and Education Center began in the lower terrace. During the construction, remains were discovered indicating that only headstones were relocated in 1968. Remains excavated between 2007 and 2010 were reinterred at Rosemound Cemetery. To eliminate future disturbances of remains at First Street Cemetery, the city council rededicated the cemetery on December 7, 2010. The cemetery is designated as a Historic Texas Cemetery and as a State Antiquities Landmark. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2011