Bueche Cemetery

San Antonio, TX

After Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II, the government detained not only more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in relocation camps but also thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian nationals—and their U.S.-citizen relatives—as 'enemy aliens.' Fort Sam Houston's old Dodd Field airfield became a U.S. Army temporary detention station, twenty acres ringed by double barbed wire and eight guard towers. From early 1942 it held detainees—never more than 150 at once—until they were paroled, exchanged, or moved to other camps, and it closed late that year.

San Antonio, TX

Georg Heinrich Buchsenschutz, a veteran of the Mexican War, came to Texas in 1850 and by 1860 had bought more than 200 acres of farmland here, marrying Friederike Schulmeier the same year and raising ten children. When their eldest daughter died at fifteen in 1881, she was buried on the homestead, and her father joined her in 1895; a dozen more family members followed over the next half-century. The small family cemetery, recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, remains open to descendants.

Universal City, TX

German immigrants Wilhelm Geier and his family arrived at Galveston in 1849 from Wolfenbüttel, and after settling in New Braunfels their daughter Johanna married fellow immigrant Martin Schmid. In 1855 the families moved to the community then called Cibolo (later Selma), buying 127 acres they eventually split between them. Martin, a Confederate cavalry veteran, was buried here in 1880, founding a family cemetery; the neighboring Kincaid graves hold a Kentucky-born blacksmith and his kin. Fences and headstones have long since vanished from both burial grounds.

San Antonio, TX

When General John J. Pershing chased Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916, Chinese merchants set up camps to supply his soldiers — and earned the resentment of a hostile local populace. Fearing reprisals, some 527 Chinese fled north with Pershing's returning column in 1917, and because the Chinese Exclusion Act barred their entry, the general had to secure special permission for them. Most settled around San Antonio's military bases as laborers, carpenters, and cooks, and a special act of Congress in 1921 finally granted them permanent residency; many stayed to open businesses.