Shiner Colored Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Back in February 1898, four men put their names to something that mattered. Nathan Austin, J.

H. Hannah, Paul Mitchell, and William O'Neal, trustees of the Shiner Colored Cemetery Association, bought one point two acres from Adolph and Emilie Hohertz. One hundred dollars.

That was the price of a place for Shiner's African American citizens to rest. The land sat on the east side of the city cemetery, to the right of and nearly in front of the main gate. Not hidden away.

Right there. Now you know something about those four trustees just from where they put it. They picked up a wire fence to border the grounds, and over the years, the community filled it, plot by plot.

By the 1940s, every last one of those plots had been used. A full cemetery tells its own story about a full community. The June 2, 1910 edition of the Shiner Gazette gives us a small window into that community.

It reported the death and burial of J. H. Hannah himself, one of the original four trustees, laid to rest in the very cemetery he helped establish.

That same edition noted that a recent scholastic census showed African American children making up twenty percent of Shiner students. Fifty-two of two hundred and fifty-nine. Those are the kinds of numbers that ground a story in real life.

Now, a cemetery at the lower end of a field has a particular problem when it rains. Drainage. And the grounds were often overgrown, often in disrepair.

Time does that to places when the hands that tended them are gone. In 1947, the Shiner Cemetery Society agreed to move burials and gravestones to a new site, about two miles south, a place known as Blue Bonnet Hill Memory Garden. Gravestones of concrete, granite, marble, and metal were moved.

Remains were moved. Historic grave materials, all of it. The oldest marked grave at Blue Bonnet Hill belongs to Thomas Mitchell, who died in November 1899, which means his marker made that journey too, carrying a name forward across half a century.

But here is the part that asks something of you, the listener. Not all the burials were moved. Several unmarked graves were left undisturbed.

The old Shiner Colored Cemetery looks like an open field now. Wildflowers bloom there every spring, which is either a comfort or an irony depending on what you carry into that thought. The marker is clear about what that ground is, though.

Sacred. A precious record of generations past. Not erased.

Still there. Still holding what it was given to hold.

What the marker says

In February 1898, Nathan Austin, J. H. Hannah, Paul Mitchell and William O'Neal, trustees of the Shiner Colored Cemetery Association, bought 1.2 acres from Adolph and Emilie Hohertz for $100. They established a burial ground for Shiner's African American citizens on the east side of the city cemetery, to the right of and nearly in front of the main gate. The June 2, 1910 edition of the Shiner Gazette reported the death and burial of J. H. Hannah in the Shiner Colored Cemetery, and also reported that a recent scholastic census showed African American children comprising 20 percent (52 of 259) of Shiner students. The cemetery was bordered by a wire fence, and by the 1940s all the plots had been used. The cemetery was often overgrown and in disrepair, and being at the lower end of a field, drainage was often a problem when it rained. In 1947, the Shiner Cemetery Society agreed to move burials and gravestones to a new site about two miles south known as Blue Bonnet Hill Memory Garden. Historic grave materials, including gravestones of concrete, granite, marble and metal, were moved along with remains. The oldest marked grave at Blue Bonnet Hill is for Thomas Mitchell, who died in November 1899. The Shiner Colored Cemetery now has the appearance of an open field which blooms with wildflowers each spring. However, not all burials were moved, and several unmarked graves were left undisturbed. The cemetery remains sacred ground and a precious record of generations past.