City Cemetery
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On July 19, 1889, the Hallettsville town council met to discuss the poor condition of various small cemeteries in the city. Mayor Fritz Lindenberg appointed Volney Ellis, W.H. Turk and E.H. Mitchel to find suitable land for burials outside the city limits. The committee completed its work in May 1890, when city cemetery trustees bought 4.5 acres from Antonia Kuhn for a new city cemetery. The town's Odd Fellows Lodge, Catholic and Jewish citizens established graveyards on adjacent fields, and part of Clairborn and Martha Moore's land southwest of the city became an African American cemetery. Existing burials were reinterred at this location, sometimes referred to as the Protestant Cemetery. The old city cemetery, located on South Dowling Street, was renamed Memorial Park in 1952. This burial ground, with tombstones inscribed in Czech and German as well as English, is a rich resource of the city's history. Confederate Maj. Gen. Arthur Pendleton Bagby (1833-1921) is one notable burial. City Cemetery has expanded over the years, taking in the Odd Fellows' site in 1945 and additional acreage to the east in 1957. The City Cemetery Association of Hallettsville manages the sacred ground. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1889 the Hallettsville town council, worried about the poor state of its scattered graveyards, set out to establish a proper city cemetery, buying 4.5 acres from Antonia Kuhn the next year and reinterring existing burials there. Around it, the Odd Fellows, Catholic, and Jewish citizens laid out their own grounds, and a nearby tract became an African American cemetery—a patchwork mirroring the town's diverse population. Its headstones inscribed in Czech, German, and English, the cemetery counts Confederate Maj. Gen. Arthur Pendleton Bagby among its notable dead.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a map in stone of a Central Texas town shaped by Czech, German, and Jewish immigrants, its separate grounds recording both the community's diversity and its divisions.
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Related people
- · Fritz Lindenberg
- · Arthur Pendleton Bagby
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Arthur Pendleton Bagby
Hallettsville, TX
Arthur Pendleton Bagby was an Alabama-born West Point graduate who cast his lot with the Confederacy, rising from colonel of the 7th Texas Cavalry to major-general. He rode in Sibley's ill-fated 1862 New Mexico campaign, helped defend Galveston, and led a brigade at the Louisiana battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign. He lived to become the last surviving member of his 1852 West Point class and is buried at Hallettsville.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church
Hallettsville, TX
Sacred Heart began as a mission of St. Mary's parish, ministered to by the Rev. John Anthony Forest, who held early services in the homes of recently arrived European immigrants. Collatinus and Mary Jane Hallet Ballard donated land in 1869, construction started in 1873, and the completed 1882 building made Sacred Heart a full parish. That same year the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament opened Sacred Heart Academy on the grounds, and Father Forest later left to become bishop of San Antonio.