Stonewall Community Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Stonewall Community Cemetery, out in Gillespie County. Now, every cemetery has a story underneath the story, and this one starts not with death but with a stage stop. After the Civil War, a man named Israel Nuñez was running a stage stop somewhere in the vicinity of what folks were calling Millville.

He laid out that settlement himself. And somewhere along the way, Nuñez set aside a piece of land for a cemetery, the way practical men of that era tended to do, because they understood that a community without a place to bury its dead wasn't really a community at all. Here's the thing, though.

He set that land aside, but it wasn't formally deeded to anyone for a long, long time. It took until 1934 before a man named J.O. Walker made it official on paper.

The land had been doing its solemn work for decades before the lawyers ever got involved. The earliest marked gravesite belongs to William Jacobs, who died in 1879. Whatever came before that, whatever souls may have been laid to rest in those earliest years, William Jacobs is the one the stone remembers.

By 1875, the settlement of Millville had become Stonewall. The name changed, the community kept growing, and that cemetery stayed in active use all the way until 1939. Then, quiet.

No new burials for years. Burials resumed in 1966. And three years after that, a cemetery association finally formed, the kind of organization that makes sure a place like this doesn't get swallowed by time and cedar.

From Israel Nuñez and a stage stop, through a name change, through decades of use, through a long silence and then a return, this ground has held the memory of a community that refused to forget itself.

What the marker says

Stonewall Community Cemetery This cemetery originally served the settlement of Millville, laid out by Israel Nuñez, who operated a stage stop in the vicinity after the Civil War. Although he set aside land for the cemetery, it was not formally deeded until 1934 by J.O. Walker. The earliest marked gravesite is that of William Jacobs (d. 1879). The settlement of Millville became Stonewall in 1875, and the cemetery remained in Active use until 1939. Burials resumed in 1966, and a cemetery association formed three years later. The site is a landmark of local history. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002