Tehuacana Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Tehuacana Cemetery, out in Limestone County, is the kind of place that holds a whole town's story in its soil. And that story starts with one man: John Boyd, born in 1796, who had already served his region well.

He'd been elected out of Sabine County to the First and Second Congresses of the Republic of Texas, which is no small thing. But Boyd had his eye on a new part of the state. He moved, he put down roots, and he helped found the town of Tehuacana back in the 1840s.

By 1847, he'd opened the town's first post office right inside his own mercantile store. That's the kind of man he was. You need a post office, you build it yourself.

Now here's where Boyd's story gets even bigger. He made an offer to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, land and money both, and that offer was convincing enough that the Church came to Tehuacana and started Trinity University right there in 1869. A whole university, called into being by one man's generosity.

But the cemetery. That's what the marker is really about. No deed record exists for this burial ground, which tells you something about how old and how organic it is.

The earliest documented burial they can point to is a little girl named Roxana B. Campbell, John Boyd's own granddaughter. She died in 1850.

She was four months old. You let that land for a moment. Four months.

And her stone is surrounded by many others just like it, infants and children from the 19th century, the marker calls them witnesses to the harshness of life on the developing Texas frontier. That's not a gentle phrase, and it shouldn't be. But life kept going, and the town kept growing, and the cemetery filled with people who shaped what Tehuacana became.

William E. Beeson, born in 1822 and gone in 1882, was the first president of Trinity University. James Lisbon Lawlis, born in 1856, died in 1902, founded Westminster College and served as its first president.

Westminster had moved to Tehuacana after Trinity University relocated that same year. Robert Marshall Love, born in 1847, was serving as Texas State Comptroller at the very moment of his death in 1903. He'd grown up right there in Tehuacana.

And then there's Minnie Schuster Reck, born in 1874, died in 1950, who opened her home to college students as a boarder. When those students grew up and scattered across the state and beyond, they didn't forget her. They came back and erected a memorial in her honor at the community center.

Not a statue of a general. Not a monument to a politician. A memorial to the woman who kept a warm house and a steady table for young people far from home.

John Boyd himself is buried here too, the man who started it all, gone in 1873. By the turn of the 21st century, the Tehuacana Cemetery held more than 800 marked burials, plus a number of graves with no marker at all. The Tehuacana Cemetery Association maintains it still.

Eight hundred names and more, from a tiny Texas town, from a granddaughter who never saw her first birthday to a state comptroller dying in office, from a university president to a woman whose students loved her enough to build her something that lasts. That's what a cemetery holds, if you know how to read it.

What the marker says

This historic graveyard reflects the heritage of Tehuacana, an early Texas town founded in the 1840s by John Boyd (1796-1873). Elected from Sabine County to the First and Second Congresses of the Republic of Texas, Boyd moved to this part of the state and established the town's first post office in his mercantile store in 1847. His offer of land and money convinced the Cumberland Presbyterian Church to begin Trinity University here in 1869. Although no deed record exists for the cemetery, the earliest documented burial is that of Boyd's granddaughter, Roxana B. Campbell, who died in 1850 at the age of four months. Hers is one of many tombstones marking the burials of infants and children during the 19th century, bearing witness to the harshness of life on the developing Texas frontier. Others buried here include William E. Beeson (1822-1882), first president of Trinity University; James Lisbon Lawlis (1856-1902), founder and first president of Westminster College, which moved to Tehuacana after Trinity University relocated in 1902; Robert Marshall Love (1847-1903), who grew up in Tehuacana and was serving as Texas State Comptroller at the time of his death; Minnie Schuster Reck (1874-1950), who boarded college students in her home (those former students erected a memorial in her honor at the community center); and town founder John Boyd. The Tehuacana Cemetery Association maintains the burial ground, which, at the turn of the 21st century, contained more than 800 marked burials and a number of unmarked graves. (2001)