Frey Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. John Frey. That name sounds plain enough, but the marker wants you to know he didn't start out as John Frey.

He started out as Johannes Frei, born in 1857 in Switzerland. He made it to America in 1877, and he didn't stop moving until he found his way down to Austin County, Texas. There he met a German immigrant named Mary Baethe, and in 1879 they married.

Now, some families settle into a quiet life. The Freys settled into something bigger. Fifteen children.

Fifteen. You let that number sit for a moment. Then, in 1889, John and Mary packed up everything and moved the family to Waller County, settling near the very ground where this marker stands today.

For a while, it was just the living out here. Land to work, children to raise, a life being built one season at a time. Then came 1902.

That year, the Freys' infant daughter Annie died, and she was buried on the family farm. Hers was the first grave. That is how a family cemetery begins, not with a plan, but with a loss too close to home to put anywhere else.

John and Mary themselves would eventually be laid to rest here too, beside their daughter and beside the land they had chosen. And here is the part that lands quiet but lands hard. Their descendants still maintain that graveyard.

A man born Johannes Frei in Switzerland in 1857 crossed an ocean, crossed a continent, built a family of fifteen, and put down roots so deep that generations later, his people are still tending the ground where it all came to rest.

What the marker says

John Frey, born Johannes Frei in 1857 in Switzerland, came to America in 1877. He settled in Austin County, Texas, where he married German immigrant Mary Baethe in 1879. They eventually were the parents of fifteen children. They moved to Waller County in 1889 and settled near this site. In 1902 the Freys' infant daughter, Annie, died and was buried on the family farm. Hers was the first grave in what became the family cemetery. John and Mary Frey were also buried here. Their descendants still maintain the historic graveyard.