DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Now settle in, because this is a story that starts at the edge of two countries and stretches across more than a century of Texas life. Jewish settlers had already found their way to the Brownsville and Matamoros area by the mid-1840s.
Think about that for a moment — this borderland, straddling the Rio Grande, was drawing people from clear across Europe before most of Texas had even figured out what it was going to be. And those settlers put down roots. They built businesses.
They served their communities. They served in wars. And eventually, as communities do, they had to think about their dead.
In 1868, the Hebrew Benevolent Society made a purchase — one half acre of land, right next to the city cemetery, bought from a man named Charles Stillman for exactly one dollar. One dollar. Now there's a transaction worth remembering.
But here's the thing that really reaches back — ten years before that purchase, in 1858, a yellow fever epidemic had already taken lives in this community. Those victims had been buried in the city cemetery. They were later reinterred here, in this ground, brought home to rest among their own.
For decades, this half acre was the only Jewish burial ground to serve the entire lower Texas Valley and Matamoros — the only one, all the way until 1950. Buried within these grounds are immigrants who crossed an ocean to get here, civic leaders, business leaders, and veterans who answered the call in every American war going back to 1845. That is not a small thing.
One half acre. One dollar. And more history than most places ten times the size ever manage to hold.
What the marker says
Jewish settlers came to the Brownsville/Matamoros area in the mid-1840's. In 1868 one half acre of land next to the city cemetery was purchased by the Hebrew Benevolent society from Charles Stillman for $1. Victims of an 1858 yellow fever epidemic, who were originally buried in the city cemetery, were later reinterred here. This was the only Jewish burial ground to serve the lower Texas Valley and Matamoros until 1950. Among the many civic and business leaders buried here are immigrants from Europe and Veterans from every American War since 1845.