San Felipe de Austin Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, as best as Duane can carry it to you. Out here in Austin County, there's a piece of ground that's been holding stories since before Texas was Texas. San Felipe de Austin Cemetery.

And to understand what rests here, you have to go back to 1824, when San Felipe de Austin was established as the community and administrative headquarters of Stephen F. Austin's original Anglo American colony in Texas. The site for that township wasn't chosen by accident or happenstance.

Stephen F. Austin himself, alongside the Baron Felipe Enrique Neri de Bastrop, selected it. And right there in the original 1824 Mexican charter for San Felipe de Austin, there's a survey that set aside this very ground for cemetery purposes.

From the very beginning, someone was thinking about the long rest. Now, the earliest documented interment on record belongs to Elisebath J. Eidman, in 1846.

But the marker is careful to tell us something important: historical references to earlier deaths in the community suggest burials here prior to that year. The ground, in other words, may hold more than the records show. What stands here today is two sections.

An Anglo section, fenced, containing about 370 grave sites. And right alongside it, separately fenced, an African American section containing an estimated 200 grave sites. At least three of those are known to be the graves of former slaves.

Three that we know of. The marker lets that number hang in the air, and you'd do well to let it. From 1824 all the way to 1966, the town of San Felipe de Austin maintained this cemetery.

That's a long stretch of tending. Since 1966, the town has added land to the cemetery and transferred its ownership and care to two community cemetery associations, both comprised of descendants of persons interred here. The people keeping this ground now are the children and grandchildren of the people lying in it.

There's something about that arrangement that feels exactly right. Many of this area's early pioneers and leaders are buried here, the marker says. Pioneers and leaders, former slaves, and people whose names didn't always make it into the documents.

San Felipe de Austin Cemetery has been holding all of them, together, since 1824.

What the marker says

San Felipe de Austin was established in 1824 as the community and administrative headquarters of Stephen F. Austin's original Anglo American colony in Texas. The site for the township was chosen by Austin and the Baron Felipe Enrique Neri de Bastrop. The original 1824 Mexican charter for San Felipe de Austin contains a survey which set aside this site for cemetery purposes. Although the earliest documented interment is that of Elisebath J. Eidman in 1846, historical references to earlier deaths in the community suggest burials here prior to that year. The cemetery consists of a fenced Anglo section containing about 370 grave sites and an adjacent, separately fenced, African American section containing an estimated 200 grave sites, at least three of which are known to be those of former slaves. From the time of its establishment in 1824 San Felipe de Austin Cemetery was maintained by the town of San Felipe de Austin until 1966. Since that year the town has added land to the cemetery and transferred its ownership and care to two community cemetery associations comprised of descendants of persons interred here. Many of this area's early pioneers and leaders are buried here. (1993)