DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about New Braunfels Cemetery. Now, every place has a beginning, and some beginnings are harder than others. New Braunfels was barely a few months old — just getting its footing on Texas soil — when the ground first opened up to receive one of its own.
June 23, 1845. That was the day Mrs. Elise Peter was laid to rest, and with her burial, the New Braunfels Cemetery was dedicated.
The town was brand new, and already it had a cemetery. That tells you something right there about the nature of what those colonists were facing. The German Emigration Company had brought these settlers to Central Texas, and the years that followed were years of hardship — the marker doesn't mince words about that.
Hardship besieged them, is the way it's put. And the ground kept accepting the evidence of it. Gerlach Peter, the husband of that very first tenant of the cemetery, was buried in July of that same year, 1845 — one of twenty fatalities recorded before the year was out.
Twenty souls in a single year, in a settlement still finding its legs. And then came 1846. Three hundred and forty-eight burials.
You sit with that number a moment. Three hundred and forty-eight. In a single year.
The early years of that colony were not gentle. Now, among all the stones that stand in that cemetery, one is the oldest. It belongs to a ferry operator by the name of Johann Justus Kellner, born in 1821, died in 1851.
His stone has outlasted a great many others, and the marker grants him that quiet distinction. All told, there are 753 marked graves in New Braunfels Cemetery — and then there are hundreds more with no marker at all. Hundreds of names the ground has kept to itself.
The last vacant lot was sold in 1945, exactly a century after that first burial. And the rule now is a firm one: no burials are allowed except in lots that were purchased before 1946. The cemetery is, in a sense, complete — holding what it holds, silent over what it never got to record.
One small patch of Comal County ground, opened in hardship, filled across a century, and closed to the rest of us ever since.
What the marker says
Dedicated at the burial of Mrs. Elise Peter, on June 23,1845, a few months after New Braunfels was founded. This cemetery gave rest to many colonists in early years of hardship that besieged the German Emigration Company. Gerlach Peter, husband of the first tenant, was buried in July as one other of the 20 fatalites of 1845. There were 348 bruials in 1846. A ferry operator, Johann Justus Kellner (1821-51), has the oldest stone. There are 753 marked and hundreds of unmarked graves. The last vacant lot was sold in 1945. No burials are allowed except in lots purchased before 1946.