DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for the Roberts-Teague Cemetery tells it this way, and I'm gonna do it justice. Out in the canyon country of Travis County, two families showed up in the Bee Cave area back in the 1860s — the Roberts family and the Teague family. Now, these weren't people who arrived with grand ambitions written on parchment.
They arrived with callused hands and clear eyes. For generations, they farmed the land, ranched it, chopped cedar from those rugged hillsides, burned coal in kilns, and kept households running in country that didn't exactly make things easy. Isolated canyons, the marker calls them.
And that phrase does a lot of work. These were people building something in a place that wasn't asking to be built upon. The cemetery itself, the story goes, began in 1898 — and the way it began is the kind of detail that sticks with you.
Joseph Roberts, born in 1843, offered the site to a grieving family. The Simons family had lost an infant, and Joseph Roberts looked at that grief and said, here, use this ground. That's how a burial place gets its first soul.
Not with ceremony or planning, but with one person extending something to another in the worst kind of moment. Joseph Roberts lived until 1925, long enough to see what that offer had become. Over the years, the cemetery gathered to itself the lives of pioneers and families from those once-isolated canyons.
And among the people laid to rest there is a name worth saying slowly — Alfred R. Simpson, known as Buck, born in 1895 and died in 1961. The marker identifies him as the second most decorated soldier of World War I.
Let that land for a second. Out of all the men who served in that war, from all the nations and all the theaters of that conflict, Buck Simpson from these canyons of Travis County stands second. He's buried here, in ground that started as an act of kindness toward a family and their infant.
That's what this cemetery holds — the weight of generations. The farmers and the ranchers, the cedar choppers and the coal kiln burners, the homemakers who held everything together in isolated country. And a decorated soldier.
And a grieving family who needed a place, and a man named Joseph Roberts who gave them one. Some cemeteries mark the end of stories. This one reads more like the whole story.
What the marker says
In the 1860s, the Roberts and Teague families came to the Bee Cave area where, for generations, their skills as farmers, ranchers, cedar choppers, coal kiln burners, and homemakers helped to shape its development and culture. It is said that this cemetery was established in 1898 when Joseph Roberts (1843-1925) offered the site to the grieving Simons family for an infant's burial. A number of veterans are laid to rest here, including Alfred R. (Buck) Simpson (1895-1961), the second most decorated soldier of World War I. This burial ground records the lives of the pioneers and families of these once isolated canyons of Travis County. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001