Hebrew Benevolence Society Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. One acre of ground. That's all.

One acre of Colorado County earth, and the story it holds is something worth pullin' over for. The Hebrew Benevolence Society Cemetery got its start in 1879, with the burial of M. A.

Levy. First soul laid to rest in ground that would quietly receive others for the better part of sixty years. Now, here's the thing that'll make you tilt your head just a little.

That name, Hebrew Benevolence Society Cemetery, sounds like it belongs to some established organization, some formal society with a charter and a meeting hall and dues paid up. But there was never a specific organization associated with this cemetery. Not one.

The name suggests an affiliation that simply did not exist. Just a name hanging over a patch of land, and the land doing the quiet work a name promises. Several of the city's Jewish citizens came to rest here.

Two infants, gone in the 1880s, their stories brief and hard. And merchant Louis Rosenstein, his name still carried in the stone. The last burial was that of Pauline Lewin Nussbaum, in 1938.

After that, silence. The cemetery was abandoned for many years. Brush has a way of moving in when people move on, and for a long stretch, that one acre was left to its own keeping.

Then, in 1988, a Boy Scout troop from congregation Beth Israel in Houston came out and restored it. Young people, doing the work of memory for strangers whose names they had to learn from the stones themselves. One acre.

Started in 1879. Restored in 1988. Some places earn their names even when no organization ever showed up to claim them.

What the marker says

Comprising one acre of land, this cemetery was begun in 1879 with the burial of M. A. Levy. Although its name suggests an affiliation with a Hebrew Benevolent Society, there was never a specific organization associated with the cemetery. Several of the city's Jewish citizens are buried here, including two infants who died in the 1880s and merchant Louis Rosenstein. The last burial was that of Pauline Lewin Nussbaum in 1938. Abandoned for many years, the cemetery was restored in 1988 by a Boy Scout troop from congregation Beth Israel in Houston.