Renken Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Medina County, tucked inside what is now Castroville Regional Park, there sits a small cemetery with a story that starts the way so many Texas stories do: with loss. Henry Renken was a German native, a man who had planted himself deep in the Castroville community.

He was a member of the Masonic Lodge. He served as city alderman. He served as mayor.

A man, in other words, who had built something real. But in 1876, his wife Lissette, Lissette Kueck Renken, passed away. And that is when Henry Renken created this cemetery.

Now here is a detail worth pausing on. Lissette was buried on property that Henry himself had sold to a man named Gerhard Ihnken, back in 1874. So Renken had let the land go, and then grief brought him right back to it.

He set a piece of it aside for her. Henry went on living. He later married Helene Thieu Borchers.

He carried on his life in Castroville, that active, civic life he was known for. But when Henry Renken died in 1885, he was buried right there. Next to Lissette.

His first wife. Records also show that the Renkens' daughter, Louisa Renken Tschirhart, was laid to rest at this site as well, though no grave marker remains to mark her place. The years moved on, as they do.

The property eventually passed to a later owner, who sold it to the city of Castroville in 1968. Today, Castroville Regional Park surrounds that little burial ground on all sides. Diminutive, the marker calls it.

Small. But a man who was mayor and alderman and lodge member chose to spend eternity in it, next to the woman he first loved. That's not a small thing at all.

What the marker says

German native Henry Renken created this cemetery in 1876 upon the death of his wife, Lissette (Kueck) Renken. She was buried on property owned by Gerhard Ihnken that Renken had sold to him in 1874. Renken was an active contributor to the Castroville Community, where he was a member of the Masonic Lodge and served as a city alderman and as mayor. Although he later married Helene Thieu Borchers, he was buried here, next to his first wife, when he died in 1885. Records show that the Renkens’ daughter, Louisa Renken Tschirhart, was also buried at the site, although no grave marker remains. The property was sold to the city of Castroville by a later owner in 1968, and Castroville Regional Park now surrounds the diminutive burial ground.