Jaeger-Witte Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll spin it out for you the way Duane does. Picture Washington County, sometime in the 1850s, when two German immigrant families, the Hagedorns and the Wittes, planted roots in Texas soil. They came over together in spirit if not in step, related families carving out a life in a new land.

And when you settle land, you eventually settle into it permanently. That's how a cemetery gets its start. There were already two graves waiting in the ground when Carl Hagedorn died in 1865.

Two graves before him, and now a third. The land around that small, quiet plot passed to his daughter Adele. Family staying with family, the way it tends to go.

Then Adele's son Paul came into the inheritance, and Paul, well, Paul made a decision. He sold the land to Henry Jaeger Sr. and his wife Alvine. Now here's where things get interesting.

When the Jaegers took ownership, that little cemetery got a proper expansion, out to a quarter acre. The Jaegers set aside a section for their own family graves, and the name on the cemetery changed too. Because by then, the Hagedorns had married into the Witte family, and so the place became the Jaeger-Witte Cemetery, honoring both lines in one breath.

Two immigrant families from Germany, generations of births and marriages and deaths in Washington County, all of it folded into a name carved on a gate. And the Jaeger family still uses that cemetery today. Some stories don't end.

They just keep addin' names.

What the marker says

A well-preserved example of a family cemetery founded by German immigrants to Texas, the Jaeger-Witte Cemetery begins with two related families, the Hagedorns and the Wittes, settling in Washington County in the 1850s. There were already two graves when Carl Hagedorn died in 1865. The land around the cemetery was given to his daughter Adele. Her son, Paul, inherited the land and sold it to Henry Jaeger Sr. and his wife Alvine. At that time, the cemetery was expanded to a quarter acre. The Jaegers made a section for family graves and the name was changed to Jaeger-Witte Cemetery, since the Hagedorns had married into the Witte family. The cemetery is still in use by the Jaeger family. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY - 2019