DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about Saint Mary's Cemetery, out there in McLennan County. Pull over if you can, because this one deserves a moment. Now, before there was a West, Texas — before there was much of anything in northern McLennan County — there were Catholic settlers findin' their way to Sunday services at St.
Martin's Church in Tours, five miles southeast of where West stands today. Five miles is a long walk when you're talkin' about faith and frontier. Then something began to shift.
In the late nineteenth century, waves of immigrant Catholic families arrived — Czech, Moravian, Slovak, German — and they kept comin'. And when enough people put down roots in a new place, they build something permanent. So a new parish was established in West.
St. Mary's Church of the Assumption went up in 1892. And then, the very next year — 1893 — a man named Joseph Hromadka and his wife Maria sold a piece of land at this very site to the Catholic Diocese.
The purpose: a cemetery. Now here is where the story turns quiet and solemn, the way cemeteries always do. Among the first to be buried here were Vaclav Masek, born in 1838 and gone by 1892, and Mary Cocek, born in 1875 and gone by 1893.
The parish was barely standing, the ground barely consecrated, and already it was receiving the dead. Today, more than two thousand seven hundred souls rest in this ground. Pioneer settlers.
Immigrants who crossed an ocean to build something new. Military veterans. Priests who gave their ministry to St.
Mary's parish. And members of several generations of some families — grandparents, parents, children, laid side by side in the same earth their people chose. One grave in particular draws the eye.
Beneath a large stone cross in the western section of the graveyard lies the Rev. Monsignor Joseph Pelnar, born in 1865, died in 1940, who led this parish for forty years. Forty years of baptisms and funerals, of feast days and hard winters, of a community findin' its footing in Texas soil.
Walk through those grounds and you'll notice something else. Many of the graves are marked with distinctive marble tombstones or metal ornamentation — and a large number of the inscriptions and epitaphs are written in the Czech language. These families came a long way, and they were not about to let the old tongue go quiet.
The marker says Saint Mary's Cemetery serves as a visible image of the area's rich cultural history. I'd say that's about right. More than two thousand seven hundred stories, carved in marble and Czech and memory, right there in McLennan County.
That ground holds a lot.
What the marker says
Early Catholic settlers in northern McLennan County worshipped at St. Martin's Church in Tours, five miles southeast of present West. After more immigrant Catholic families of Czech, Moravian, Slovak, and German origin moved to the area in the late 19th century, a new parish was established in west. St. Mary's Church of the Assumption was built in 1892, and in 1893 Joseph and Maria Hromadka sold land at this site to the Catholic Diocese for development as a cemetery are those of Vaclav Masek (1838-1892) and Mary Cocek (1875-1893) Among the more than 2,700 persons buried here are pioneer settlers, immigrants, military veterans, members of several generations of some families, and priests who have served St. Mary's parish. The Rev. Monsignor Joseph Pelnar (1865-1940), who led the Parish for forty years, is buried beneath the large stone cross in the western section of the graveyard. Many of the graves are marked with distinctive marble tombstones or metal ornamentation; a large number of inscriptions and epitaphs are in the Czech language. The cemetery serves as a visible image of the area's rich cultural history.