Post Oak Community Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Guadalupe County, there's a place where the land remembers. The Post Oak Community Cemetery, shaded by two large post oaks, holds more than a hundred and sixty-nine graves, and the story of how it came to be is the story of a community that took care of its own.

It starts with a church. The Post Oak Zion Evangelical Church, established in 1885, served a mostly German community, the kind of close-knit congregation where everybody knew everybody, and everybody's family had been there since nearly the beginning. For nine years, the church grew, the community grew, and the need for a proper resting place grew right along with them.

Then, in 1894, two families stepped forward. The Gottlieb and Louise Brietzke family donated an acre of land. The Julius and Johanna Schievelbein family donated an acre of land.

Two families, two acres, one purpose, to give their church a cemetery. Now, that's when the records begin in earnest. But the ground itself tells an older story.

The first documented grave in that cemetery belongs to a ten-year-old boy named Julius Radatz, who died in 1888, six years before those families made their donations official. Six years before the deed was signed, a child was already resting there. That's the kind of detail that stops you.

More than a hundred and sixty-nine graves have followed, pioneer settlers and their descendants, generation laid beside generation, right there beneath those two great post oaks. And the cemetery, it continues to serve the local area still. Some places hold history.

This one holds family.

What the marker says

The Post Oak Zion Evangelical Church, established in 1885, served a mostly German community. The families of Gottlieb and Louise Brietzke and Julius and Johanna Schievelbein each donated an acre of land in 1894 to their church for cemetery purposes. The first documented grave in the cemetery is that of 10-year old Julius Radatz who died in 1888. More than 169 graves are contained here including many of the area's pioneer settlers and their descendants. The cemetery contained two large post oaks on the grounds, and continues to serve the local area. (1996)