Columbus' Old City Cemetery

🏛️The era

Columbus sits on the Colorado River in southeast Texas and is one of the oldest Anglo-American towns in the state. Its story begins in the 1820s, when Stephen F. Austin brought the first colonists to Mexican Texas under a grant from the Mexican government. Those first families became known as the "Old 300," and some of them settled along this stretch of the Colorado.

The area played a role in the Texas Revolution of 1835 and 1836. During the retreat after the fall of the Alamo, when settlers fled east in what Texans call the Runaway Scrape, Sam Houston's army camped near here at a river crossing before continuing its retreat. The town was burned during that retreat, and settlers had to rebuild after independence.

In the following decades Columbus grew into a county seat and a trading town. It lived through the Republic, statehood, the Civil War and Reconstruction. The cemetery reflects all of those eras, from the founding colonists to the soldiers of the 1860s and the victims of a deadly epidemic in 1873.

👥People & events

Nobody knows exactly when the first burial took place here. The oldest headstone that survives dates to 1853, but the ground was clearly a graveyard before then. By 1870, when the seven-acre site was deeded to the city, it was already an established cemetery.

Some of the people buried here were among the first Anglo settlers of Texas. Benjamin Beason and W. B. DeWees were both part of Austin's Old 300. DeWees is remembered as a founder of Columbus. Nearby lies Dilue Rose, who lived through the upheavals of the 1830s and is remembered as a historian of that era. Her firsthand recollections of early Texas, including the frantic flight of families during the Revolution, are still read today. Her husband, Sheriff Ira Harris, is buried here too.

Other graves connect to wider stories. Gen. Augustus Jones fought in both the War of 1812 and the Texas War for Independence. Dr. John G. Logue is remembered as the founder of the first drugstore in Texas, in 1845. The Rev. Jacob Scherer founded Colorado College in 1857, a local school not to be confused with the later college of the same name in Colorado.

The cemetery also holds many Confederate soldiers and victims of the 1873 yellow fever epidemic. Yellow fever was a terrifying disease in 1800s Texas and the Gulf South. No one yet knew that mosquitoes spread it, and outbreaks could sweep through a town in weeks, leaving families to bury loved ones in a hurry.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

This cemetery is a roll call of the people who turned Mexican Texas into an American state. The Austin colonists, revolutionary veterans and town founders buried here were part of one of the most important migrations in American history, the movement of Americans into land that belonged to Mexico. That migration led to Texas independence, annexation and, in time, the Mexican-American War.

The graves also show the range of experience in early Texas. Here lie a War of 1812 veteran, a pioneering pharmacist, a minister who founded a college, a woman whose memories became history and soldiers of the Civil War. Few places bring together so many threads of the 1800s on a single piece of ground.

Finally, the yellow fever victims remind you how fragile life was in the 1800s. Epidemics shaped towns across the South and along the Gulf Coast, and the fear they caused helped drive later advances in public health. A cemetery like this keeps that hard chapter in view.

🧭If you visit

Walk slowly through the old part of the cemetery and look for the oldest stones. With the earliest surviving headstone dating to 1853, you will find some weathered, hard-to-read markers. Some of the graves from the founding era may be unmarked or have newer memorial stones. Take your time and read what you can.

Think of the graves as a timeline. Founding colonists, revolutionary veterans, Confederate soldiers and epidemic victims are all here together, and spotting dates from different decades makes the history feel real. As always in an old cemetery, be gentle with fragile stones and respectful of family plots.

Columbus is an easy and rewarding stop between Houston and San Antonio. The town has a historic downtown, a courthouse square and many old homes, and the Colorado River runs right past it. Pair the cemetery with a walk through town to see how much of early Texas history is packed into this one place.