DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at Pin Oak Cemetery tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most cemeteries, they start with a name on a stone. Pin Oak Cemetery started with two men who didn't even get that much.
The year was 1842. Two soldiers — ailing, worn down — made their last journey away from the Battle of Salado Creek, near San Antonio. They found their way to this piece of Fayette County ground, and they didn't make it any further.
Those first two burials are here, somewhere beneath your feet if you're standin' at the right spot — unmarked, unnamed on any stone, known to us now only by what the record remembers. That's how this place began. Not with a ceremony.
With two soldiers and the quiet that follows a fight. The oldest marked grave belongs to Lee F. T.
Cottle, born 1788, died 1845. He at least got his name carved in stone. The land itself was once held by the Routh family, and for a good long while this burial ground served two communities — Black Jack Springs and Pin Oak — which is why, depending on who you ask and when they were born, they might call it one name or the other.
And here is where the story deepens, because the people resting in this ground are not one story. They are many. Settlers from the Republic of Texas era.
Slaves. Veterans of the War of 1812. Men who fought in the Texas Revolution.
Soldiers from the Civil War. Pioneers and their descendants, layered generation after generation into Fayette County soil. An association more than a hundred years old has been tending these grounds — keepin' the grass back, keepin' the memory forward.
A hundred years of people deciding that this place deserves to be cared for. That's the thing about Pin Oak Cemetery. It began with two soldiers nobody could mark.
And it grew into a place that marks nearly everyone — and refuses to forget a single one of them.
What the marker says
The first burials at this site, now unmarked, were for two ailing soldiers who died here following the Battle of Salado Creek near San Antonio in 1842. The oldest marked grave is that of Lee F.T. Cottle (1788-1845). Located on property once held by the Routh family, this burial ground served both the communities of Black Jack Springs and Pin Oak and has been known by both names. An association, over 100 years old, cares for these grounds that chronicle settlers of the Republic of Texas era; slaves; veterans of the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution and the Civil War; and many area pioneers and their descendants. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002