Port Isabel Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along to you straight. The Port Isabel Cemetery sits on almost one acre of land, and that land has a history stretching back a good long while. It starts with a grant from the government of Mexico in 1829, deeded to a man named Don Rafael Garcia.

The parcel carried the name the Santa Ysabel Grant, and Garcia wasted little time putting it to use, establishing a ranch he called El Fronton de Santa Isabel. That translates out to Saint Elizabeth's Bluff, if you're keeping notes. Now here's a thing worth knowing about Garcia: he kept his home over in Matamoros, Mexico, and left the ranch to hired workers to operate day to day.

He owned the land, but someone else was living on it, working it, and, as it turns out, burying their dead on it. According to local tradition, those workers on El Fronton de Santa Isabel Ranch started using this spot as a burial ground as early as the 1840s. That is a long time of laying people to rest in the earth.

But here's the quiet heartbreak of it: not a single grave marker from that era survived. The oldest marked graves in the cemetery only go back to the 1880s. Whoever those earliest souls were, their names are gone from the stone record, even if not from the ground itself.

What the ground did receive, officially and with ceremony, was a consecration. In December of 1849, French Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate blessed the site for use as a Catholic cemetery. And yet, from that moment forward, it served people of all faiths, not just one tradition but a whole community's worth of them.

The land changed hands over time, as land does. Eventually it came to members of the Champion family, written in some records as Campeoni, an Italian family who had made their way to America in the early nineteenth century. They became part of this place, and in 1926, the Champion family donated the cemetery property to the Catholic Church.

Almost one acre. Grants and ranches, workers without headstones, a December consecration, an Italian family carrying an old name into a new world. That cemetery is still there in Port Isabel, still an important element of the town's cultural history, holding all of it quietly in the ground.

What the marker says

Encompassing almost one acre of land, the Port Isabel Cemetery is located on property granted to Don Rafael Garcia by the government of Mexico in 1829. The land was known as the Santa Ysabel Grant, and Garcia soon established a ranch he named El Fronton de Santa Isabel (Saint Elizabeth's Bluff). Garcia continued to reside at his home in Matamoros, Mexico, and the ranch was operated by hired workers. According to local tradition, the workers on El Fronton de Santa Isabel Ranch began to use this site as a burial ground as early as the 1840s. No grave markers from that time period survive, however, and the oldest marked graves in the cemetery date to the 1880s. The ground was consecrated for use as a Catholic cemetery by French Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in December 1849, although it has served as a community burial ground for people of all faiths throughout its history. Later owners of the land included members of the Champion (Campeoni) Family, who immigrated to America from Italy in the early 19th Century. The Champion Family donated the cemetery property to the Catholic Church in 1926. It remains an important element of Port Isabel's cultural history.