Boggy Creek Masonic Cemetery
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to local tradition, in the winter of 1859, 23-year-old John Davis joined a community wagon train headed for work in the pine forests of Bastrop County. Davis, sprayed by a skunk during the night, began running wildly through the camp. He was mistaken for a Comanche intruder and accidentally shot to death. His father, Jenkins Davis, buried his son here, on 2.3 acres he purchased near Boggy Creek and his Manchaca home. John's 1859 burial is the earliest recorded here. In 1876 Jenkins Davis, a member of the early area Onion Creek Masonic Lodge No. 220, donated the 2.3 acres to the lodge, and the site became a community graveyard. First called Boggy Creek and later Boggy Creek Masonic Cemetery, the graveyard had become known simply as Masonic Cemetery by the 1960s. Enlarged over the years, the cemetery contains about 6.6 acres and more than 1,200 burials. Among the people buried here are area pioneer settlers and their descendants; members of fraternal organizations such as the Masons and Woodmen of the World; and veterans of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I & II, and the Korean Conflict. Onion Creek Lodge No. 220, A. F. & A. M., continues to maintain the cemetery. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Local tradition holds that this graveyard began in 1859 with the burial of young John Davis, accidentally shot after a skunk's spray sent him running through camp and he was mistaken for a Comanche intruder. His father later donated the land to the Onion Creek Masonic Lodge, and it grew into a community graveyard of more than 1,200 burials on some 6.6 acres. Among those interred are pioneer settlers, fraternal-order members, and veterans from the Civil War through the Korean Conflict.
Why it matters
From a frontier death mistaken for an Indian raid to graves of veterans across a century of American wars, this Masonic cemetery captures the layered history of settlement, fraternal life, and service in central Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1859, the country around Boggy Creek and Manchaca, south of Austin, was the edge of settled Texas. Statehood was barely more than a decade old, and this was still frontier—a place where families carved out farms and homes with the knowledge that the wider region remained contested ground. The fear of raids was a constant, unspoken companion of frontier life, shaping how people traveled, how they camped, and how they reacted to a sound in the dark.
Work drew men across this landscape. The pine forests of Bastrop County offered timber and jobs, and a community wagon train headed for that work was an ordinary, hopeful thing—neighbors banding together for a journey through country where traveling alone was unwise. Such a journey is where this cemetery's story begins, in the winter of that year.
The decades that followed would see this ground pass from a single family's grief to a community's shared institution, shaped by the fraternal lodges and churches that organized so much of rural social life in the late nineteenth century. What started at the raw edge of the frontier would grow, over more than a century, into a settled community's resting place.
People & events
Local tradition holds that it began with a tragedy almost too strange to bear. In the winter of 1859, 23-year-old John Davis joined a community wagon train bound for the pine forests of Bastrop County. In the night he was sprayed by a skunk and, in his distress, began running wildly through the camp. In the tense darkness of the frontier, his fellow travelers mistook him for a Comanche intruder—and he was accidentally shot to death. It is a story that captures, in one terrible instant, how fear and confusion could turn deadly on the edge of settlement.
His father, Jenkins Davis, buried his son on 2.3 acres he purchased near Boggy Creek and his Manchaca home. John's 1859 grave is the earliest recorded here—a father's private sorrow that would become the seed of something larger. In 1876, Jenkins Davis, a member of the early Onion Creek Masonic Lodge No. 220, donated those 2.3 acres to the lodge, and the family plot became a community graveyard.
Known first as Boggy Creek, then Boggy Creek Masonic Cemetery, and simply Masonic Cemetery by the 1960s, it grew over the years to about 6.6 acres and more than 1,200 burials. Among those laid to rest are pioneer settlers and their descendants; members of fraternal organizations such as the Masons and the Woodmen of the World; and veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean Conflict. Onion Creek Lodge No. 220, A. F. & A. M., continues to maintain the grounds it was given nearly a century and a half ago.
Its place in the American story
This cemetery holds two great American stories in one plot of ground. The first is the frontier itself—the settlement of Texas at a moment when a misjudged sound in the dark could cost a young man his life. John Davis's death is a small, human window onto the anxious reality of the frontier, where the line between neighbor and perceived threat could vanish in an instant.
The second is the story of American fraternal life. That a grieving father would entrust his son's resting place to a Masonic lodge, and that the lodge would still be tending it more than a century later, speaks to the extraordinary role fraternal orders once played in American communities. The Masons and groups like the Woodmen of the World provided fellowship, mutual aid, and continuity—and their care for the dead was among their most sacred duties. This ground is a living example of that promise kept.
And like so many community cemeteries, its rows of veterans trace the nation's century of conflict: Civil War, Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and Korea. In one quiet place near Austin, you can walk from the frontier era straight through to the mid-twentieth century, reading the service of ordinary Americans in the stones above their graves.
If you visit
Come knowing the story of how it began, and the ground takes on a different weight. Somewhere here lies John Davis, whose 1859 burial started it all—a reminder that this settled, tended cemetery grew from a single frontier tragedy. Holding that story in mind as you walk turns a quiet graveyard into a place where you can feel the reach of history.
Look for the fraternal symbols carved into the stones—the square and compasses of the Masons, or the distinctive tree-stump and log monuments favored by the Woodmen of the World, which are among the most striking grave markers of their era. Seek out the veterans' graves too, spanning from the Civil War through Korea; together they map more than a century of American service in a single walk. With over 1,200 burials across roughly 6.6 acres, there is a great deal of local history to take in.
This is a rewarding stop on a day exploring the historic communities south of Austin, where the modern city gives way to the older landscape of Manchaca and Onion Creek. It remains an active, cared-for cemetery, tended by the same lodge that received it in 1876, so visit respectfully—walk gently, leave the markers undisturbed, and let the place tell you its long story from a single grave to a community's shared ground.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Davis
- · Jenkins Davis
Themes & tags
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