Old St. Mary's Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight from there. Now, if you ever want to understand how fast a Texas coastal town can rise and fall, pull up a chair — because the story of St. Mary's will show you exactly that.

It starts with a man named Joseph F. Smith. He was the nephew of Henry Smith — Henry Smith, who served as Texas' provisional governor — and in 1857, Joseph F.

Smith founded the town of St. Mary's. When you come from that kind of family, maybe you carry a certain ambition in your bones.

Whatever the reason, the town took root. And when a town takes root, it needs a place to remember its people. Ten acres were set aside for a burial ground — Old St.

Mary's Cemetery. The earliest marked grave in that ground is dated 1860. That's the oldest name they can point to, the first stone in the row.

After that, the community grew, and the cemetery served it faithfully through the years of what the marker calls a thriving community. Thriving. That word does a lot of work here, because what comes next is the gut-punch. 1886.

A storm rolled in off the coast — the kind of storm that doesn't negotiate — and it destroyed the businesses and the homes. Not just damaged. Destroyed.

And when the buildings go, the people follow. Residents moved away. The town of St.

Mary's, that thriving coastal place, went quiet. The cemetery sat largely alone, ten acres of memory with no new community around it to tend it. But here's the thing about land along the Texas coast — people always come back to it.

By 1909, land development returned to the area, and with it, the cemetery came back into use. The ground that had waited out the silence was needed again. Today, Old St.

Mary's Cemetery holds the remains of war veterans and pioneer area settlers. It stands as a reminder — the marker's own word, reminder — of what once was an important early coastal town. A town founded in 1857, buried its first marked soul in 1860, was struck down by a storm in 1886, and quietly resumed its purpose in 1909.

Some places outlast the towns that built them. This is one of them.

What the marker says

Joseph F. Smith, Nephew of Texas' provisional governor Henry Smith, founded the town of St. Mary's in 1857. Ten acres were set aside for this burial ground, in which the earliest marked grave is dated 1860. The cemetery served the thriving community until an 1886 storm destroyed business and homes, causing residents to move away. In 1909, with the return of land development to the area, the cemetery was again used. The burial site of war veterans and pioneer area settlers, the cemetery serves as a reminder of the important early coastal town of St. Mary's. (1983)