DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's what happened out in Coryell County — and it's a story that starts with two acres of land and ends with a name that outlasted the reasons it was given. Back in 1895, members of the German Bethel Baptist Church — known today as Bethel Heights Baptist Church — established a graveyard in this part of Texas. They called it the German Baptist Cemetery, and a man named A.
T. Voss deeded two acres of land to the deacons of the church to be used for that purpose. The property sat approximately one mile east of the former church site, right across the road from the Hemmeline School, which was named for a family living nearby.
The small community itself had been originally settled by German immigrants, and in time it came to be known as the Plainview and Bethel Heights Community. Now the early organizational records of the cemetery — and here's a detail that'll stop you a moment — those records were handwritten in German. They laid it all out with care: one acre would be divided into family plots of eight graves, sold for one dollar apiece.
The second acre was reserved for the broader community. Clean, deliberate, written in the language the founders knew best. Then 1915 comes around.
The cemetery officials put it in the minutes — and this is worth saying plainly — that the cemetery would be open to persons of any nationality or skin color, with preference given to members of the church congregation and their families. That's not a small thing to have written down, and it's sitting right there in the record. Now, somewhere in the early 1900s, the cemetery began appearing in obituaries under a different name: Hemmeline Cemetery.
No official name change was ever recorded — not a single document says the day it happened or who decided it. But there's a reason the marker gives for why German references were quietly set aside. American involvement in World Wars I and II.
Many people and institutions dropped German references or German-sounding names at that time in order to avoid hostility. The church itself changed its name from German Bethel Baptist Church to Bethel Heights Baptist Church in 1940. So a name that came from a family living nearby — a school across the road, the Hemmelines — became the name that endured.
Not the German Baptist Cemetery. Not anything that announced where these founders came from. Just Hemmeline.
The church continued to administer the cemetery all the way until 1974, when a cemetery association organized to carry things forward. Two acres. One dollar a plot.
Records handwritten in a language that had to be carefully tucked away. What a quiet, complicated piece of ground this is.
What the marker says
In 1895, members of the German Bethel Baptist Church (now Bethel Heights Baptist Church) established this graveyard as the German Baptist Cemetery. A. T. Voss deeded two acres of land to the deacons of the church to be used as a cemetery. The property was located approximately one mile east of the former church site, and was located across the road from the Hemmeline School, which was named for a family living nearby. The small community, originally settled by german immigrants, is now known as the Plainview/Bethel Heights Community. The early organizational records of the cemetery were handwritten in German, and designated one acre to be divided into family plots of eight graves to be sold for one dollar, with the second acre to be used by the community. Minutes in 1915 show that cemetery officials decided that the cemetery would be open to persons of any nationality or skin color, with preference given to members of the church congregation and their families. Although no records exist showing an official name change, obituaries show that the cemetery came to be known as Hemmeline Cemetery during the early 1900s. American involvement in World Wars I and II may have contributed to the permanent name change. Many people and institutions dropped German references or German-sounding names at that time in order to avoid hostility. The church also changed its name from German Bethel Baptist Church to Bethel Heights Baptist Church in 1940. The German Bethel Baptist Church (Bethel Heights Baptist Church) continued to administer the cemetery until 1974, when a cemetery association organized. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2008