Oak Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out on a piece of Goliad ground they call College Hill, there sits a place that has been holdin' the stories of this corner of Texas for a long, long time. Oak Hill Cemetery.

The earliest headstone in the whole burial ground marks the grave of Ann Elizabeth Hunter, who died in 1843. Think about that for a moment. Eighteen forty-three.

Before the city even had a name for this place, before any ordinance or association or official anything, Ann Elizabeth Hunter was laid to rest on that hill, and her stone has been standin' watch ever since. That's where the story starts. Then on January 10, 1854, a city ordinance made it official, designated the site as Oak Hill Cemetery, gave it the name that College Hill had been earnin' all along.

The city took care of the grounds itself for nearly three decades after that, until 1882, when the Oak Hill Cemetery Association was formed and took up that responsibility. Nearly a thousand known graves are tucked into that ground today. A thousand lives, a thousand stories, many of them belonging to prominent citizens of early Texas.

And here's the thing that settles over you when you stand there: no new lots have been available for sale since the early nineteen hundreds. The circle is closed. The names already there are the names that will always be there.

College Hill isn't growin' any quieter, but Oak Hill Cemetery, it's done takin' on new neighbors. It just keeps holdin' the ones it has.

What the marker says

The earliest headstone in this community burial ground marks the grave of Ann Elizabeth Hunter, who died in 1843. A city ordinance designated the site as Oak Hill Cemetery on January 10, 1854. Located in the part of Goliad called "College Hill", the cemetery contains almost 1,000 known graves. The city maintained the site until 1882, when the Oak Hill Cemetery Association was formed. No new lots have been available for sale since the early 1900s. Many prominent citizens of early Texas are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.