DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll tell it to you straight in my own way. Now, the Gonzales City Cemetery carries a story that reaches all the way back to the very beginning of things in that part of Texas. By tradition — and in Texas, tradition carries weight — the remains of early settlers who were first buried in Cemetery Square, in the inner town of Gonzales, are said to rest here now, together, in a common grave.
Think about that for a moment. Not side by side in neat rows with their names cut in stone. A common grave.
The earliest of the early, gathered together one final time. There's a kind of rough equality in that. A frontier dignity.
And the ground at Gonzales City Cemetery holds them still. But the story doesn't stop with the unnamed. Resting here too are men whose names got tangled up in one of the biggest moments this state has ever known — the Texas Revolution.
Dr. George W. Barnett.
Major Valentine Barnett, who served as quartermaster — the man who kept an army fed and supplied, the kind of work that doesn't get the songs written about it but without which nothing moves, nothing fights, nothing survives. And Matthew Caldwell. Key men, the marker calls them.
Key men in the Texas Revolution. That phrase does a lot of work in just a few words. So when you pass through Gonzales, know that the ground there is holding more history than most places dare to claim — settlers without monuments, and men whose names are woven into the founding of Texas, all of them keeping company in the same quiet earth.
What the marker says
By tradition, remains of early settlers buried at first in Cemetery Square, inner town of Gonzales, rest here in a common grave. Others buried here include key men in Texas Revolution, Dr. George W. Barnett, Maj. Valentine Barnett ( quartermaster ), and Matthew Caldwell.