DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker's the word on this one, and here's how I tell it. Out on the elevated ridge at Indianola Beach, there's a cemetery sitting quiet above the Gulf. Not just any cemetery, mind you — one of three that served the port of Indianola during the 19th century.
Three graveyards for one port town. That alone ought to tell you something about the kind of place Indianola was. The oldest existing grave marker out there bears the name James Chilton Allan, with a date of 1851.
That stone has outlasted a great deal. Also resting in that ground are some of Calhoun County's earliest settlers — folks who came over in the first wave of German immigration to Texas in the 1840s. They crossed an ocean, made it to this new world, built something on that coastal plain, and this ridge became their final resting place.
Now here's where the story takes a turn that'll stay with you. Among those once buried here was Angelina Eberly — died 1860 — a woman the marker calls the heroine of the Texas Archives War. A heroine of a whole war, and her tombstone is gone.
Vanished. Because that's what storms and vandalism do over time. Many of the original tombstones have disappeared the same way — taken by weather or by worse.
What's left out on that ridge is partial testimony to everything that was. And what's missing is its own kind of testimony too.
What the marker says
Located on the elevated ridge at Indianola Beach, this cemetery is one of three that served the port of Indianola during the 19th century. The oldest existing grave marker, that of James Chilton Allan, bears a date of 1851. Also buried here are some of Calhoun County's earliest settlers, who came in the first wave of German immigration to Texas in the 1840s. Many of the original tombstones, including that of Angelina Eberly (d. 1860), heroine of the Texas Archives War, have disappeared over time because of storms and vandalism. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836- 1986.