Citizens Memorial Garden Cemetery
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Referred to historically as Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown Negro Cemetery, Colored Cemetery, Georgetown Citizens Cemetery, and Masonic Cemetery, Citizens Memorial Garden Cemetery is a historic burial ground in Georgetown. Due to the common racial segregation of public spaces and resources, the cemetery was set aside for African American and Hispanic residents, paupers and any others who wished to be buried here. The site was then west of the city limits on the Liberty Hill Road. In 1906, Mayor R.E. Ward appointed Zenie Henley, George Davis, Henry Smith, Anthony Price and Esau Beard as the first trustees. Some of the individuals buried here were formerly enslaved and lived to experience post-Civil War Emancipation and Reconstruction. Hundreds of individuals have been laid to rest here. Issues such as headstone degradation and unmarked graves make it difficult to complete a full assessment of the exact number of burials. African Americans have historically been a significant portion of Williamson County’s demographics, representing 10 percent of the county’s population in 1850 and 19 percent of the population in 1860. Although Citizens Memorial Garden Cemetery is most often recognized as an African American cemetery, dozens of Hispanics are also interred here. Formerly, a barbed wire fence separated the African American and Hispanic sections of the cemetery. Records indicate that the City of Georgetown conveyed the cemetery to the African American community in 1906 for grounds maintenance. A local masonic lodge maintained the cemetery for many years until 1980, when the Citizens Memorial Association assumed responsibility for its care. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2023
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Known over the years as Oak Hill, the Georgetown Negro Cemetery, the Colored Cemetery, and the Masonic Cemetery, this burial ground was set aside under segregation for Georgetown's African American and Hispanic residents, paupers, and others. In 1906 Mayor R. E. Ward appointed its first Black trustees, and the city conveyed the grounds to the African American community for upkeep. Some interred here had been enslaved and lived to see Emancipation and Reconstruction; a barbed-wire fence once divided the African American and Hispanic sections.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a physical record of segregation's reach into even the resting places of the dead, and of the substantial African American and Hispanic communities who built Williamson County.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This burial ground took shape in the long era stretching from Reconstruction into the modern age, when the promise of Emancipation collided with the hardening reality of segregation. In Georgetown, as across the South, public spaces and public resources were divided by race — and that division reached even into the ground where the dead were laid.
The African American presence in Williamson County was substantial and long-standing. The inscription records that Black residents made up ten percent of the county's population in 1850 and nineteen percent by 1860 — a large community by any measure, and one that would need, among everything else a community needs, a place to bury its own.
Set aside on what was then land west of the city limits along the Liberty Hill Road, this cemetery answered that need. It went by many names over the years — Oak Hill, the Georgetown Negro Cemetery, the Colored Cemetery, the Citizens Cemetery, the Masonic Cemetery — each one a small record of how the world outside its fence spoke of the people within it.
People & events
In 1906, Mayor R. E. Ward appointed the cemetery's first trustees — Zenie Henley, George Davis, Henry Smith, Anthony Price, and Esau Beard — and the city conveyed the grounds to the African American community to maintain. It was an act of self-governance in miniature: a community entrusted with the care of its own sacred ground.
Some of those laid to rest here had been born into slavery and lived to see Emancipation and Reconstruction — a span of history almost too large to fit into a single life. To walk among these graves is to stand near people who knew bondage and freedom both, and who helped build Williamson County through all of it.
The cemetery is most often remembered as an African American burial ground, but dozens of Hispanic residents are interred here as well, and a barbed-wire fence once separated the two sections — segregation drawn even between neighbors sharing the same hillside. A local Masonic lodge tended the grounds for decades, until 1980, when the Citizens Memorial Association took up the responsibility of care that continues the trust begun in 1906.
Its place in the American story
A segregated cemetery is one of the most quietly powerful records of American racial history, because it shows the color line extending past the end of life itself. The same logic that divided schools, streetcars, and lunch counters divided graveyards — and even, here, drew a barbed-wire fence between the African American and Hispanic sections of a single burial ground.
Yet these grounds are far more than monuments to exclusion. Across the country, Black cemeteries became cherished community institutions — cared for, governed, and defended by the very people society tried to push to the margins. The trustees of 1906 and the associations that followed turned a segregated plot into a place of dignity and belonging.
The challenges the inscription names — degraded headstones, unmarked graves, an uncertain final count of the hundreds buried here — are the challenges facing historic African American cemeteries nationwide. Its designation as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2023 is part of a broader American effort to recover and protect these fragile, essential records before they are lost.
If you visit
Come to this place as you would to any cemetery — quietly, and with respect for the families whose loved ones rest here. This is an active sacred site, not a museum, and the right posture is reverence rather than curiosity alone.
As you walk, look closely and gently. Some headstones have weathered nearly to blankness, and many graves are unmarked altogether, so that the hundreds laid to rest here far outnumber the stones you can read. That silence is part of the story: it testifies to how hard it has been to keep a full record of a community that segregation tried to erase. If you can still trace where a fence once separated sections of the ground, let that line register for what it was.
A stop here belongs on any thoughtful visit to Georgetown, alongside the town's better-known historic sites. It offers something the grander landmarks often can't — a direct, human encounter with the people, free and formerly enslaved, African American and Hispanic, who built this county and whose names deserve to be remembered.
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
- · R. E. Ward
- · Zenie Henley
- · Esau Beard
Related events
- · Emancipation and Reconstruction
Themes & tags
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