Concrete Cemetery
La Vernia, Guadalupe County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Encompassing 6.814 acres of land, Concrete Cemetery includes within its borders burials for both Anglo and Hispanic citizens of the La Vernia and New Berlin communities. The area surrounding the cemetery was called Concrete (formerly Bethesda). Local farmer and rancher James Henry Newton, who brought his family here from Mississippi about 1851-52, designated a portion of his property as a burial ground when his brother Joel died in 1856. The oldest recorded burial, that of Maria Madden Dial in 1855, indicates previous use as a graveyard. The community and cemetery were named for an 1858 concrete building used as a school, church and Masonic Hall. James Newton officially deeded a two-acre tract of land here in 1875 for use as a community cemetery. The first documented burial in the adjacent Hispanic section is that of Paulita Salazar in 1913. Additional donations of land were made by the descendants of J. G. and Jennie Scull. The graveyard contains a diverse collection of gravestones reflecting the historic communities it serves. Among the more than 800 burials here are pioneer settlers, infants and children, veterans and members of fraternal organizations. The site continues to serve the area. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Concrete Cemetery grew out of the land of James Henry Newton, who brought his family from Mississippi about 1851–52 and set aside a burial ground when his brother Joel died in 1856, though an 1855 grave suggests earlier use. The surrounding community—first called Bethesda, then Concrete—took its name from an 1858 concrete building that served as school, church, and Masonic hall. Newton deeded the tract formally in 1875, and the cemetery came to hold both Anglo and Hispanic sections, with more than 800 burials of pioneers, veterans, and children.
Why it matters
Its side-by-side Anglo and Hispanic sections make the cemetery a lasting record of the two communities who together settled and worked this corner of frontier Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time James Henry Newton reached this stretch of south-central Texas, the land between the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers was still raw frontier. Texas had only recently become a state, and families were pouring in from the older South to take up cheap, fertile ground. Newton came from Mississippi around 1851–52, part of that great overland stream of farmers and stock-raisers who saw in Texas a chance to start over on land of their own.
The community that grew up around him began under the name Bethesda and later took the name Concrete. The renaming came from something genuinely novel for the time and place: a building put up in 1858 out of concrete, a material still uncommon on the frontier, that served triple duty as school, church, and Masonic hall. In a scattered rural settlement, a single sturdy structure like that was the whole civic life of a place under one roof.
This was a landscape being settled by two peoples at once. Anglo families arriving from the American South and Hispanic families already rooted in the region worked the same country, and — as the cemetery records — were laid to rest within the same ground.
People & events
The story here begins with a death. When James Newton's brother Joel died in 1856, Newton set aside a portion of his own farm and ranch land as a place to bury him. That act of grief turned private property into a community institution. But the ground may have been serving that purpose even earlier: the oldest recorded burial belongs to Maria Madden Dial in 1855, a year before Joel's death, hinting that neighbors were already turning to this spot to lay their dead.
For nearly two decades the arrangement was informal — a farmer's generosity rather than a deeded public place. Newton made it official in 1875, formally granting a two-acre tract as a community cemetery. Later, descendants of J. G. and Jennie Scull added more land, the kind of quiet, generational stewardship that keeps a rural burial ground alive.
The Hispanic section carries its own first name: Paulita Salazar, whose 1913 burial is the earliest documented there. Together the recorded names trace how a single family's field became the shared resting place of a whole countryside.
Its place in the American story
A cemetery like this one is a map of American westward expansion drawn in stone. The mid-19th-century movement of Southern families into Texas — people like the Newtons, bringing households, livestock, and hopes overland from states like Mississippi — is one of the defining migrations of the era, and it played out one farm and one family plot at a time.
What makes Concrete Cemetery especially telling is that it holds both Anglo and Hispanic burials within its borders. The blending — and the boundaries — of these two communities is central to the larger Texas and American story. The ground records not an abstraction but the actual people, side by side, who did the settling.
With more than 800 burials spanning pioneers, veterans, members of fraternal orders, and the many infants and children whose small graves testify to how hard frontier life could be, the cemetery is a full social portrait of a rural community across generations — the kind of ordinary place where national history actually happened.
If you visit
Come here for the quiet and for the reading. A historic cemetery rewards slow walking, and this one covers nearly seven acres, so give yourself time to move among the rows rather than just glancing from the gate.
Look closely at the variety of the gravestones — the marker itself notes their diversity, and that variety is the point. Different eras, different families, and the distinct Anglo and Hispanic sections each leave their signature in the shapes, materials, and lettering of the stones. Watch for the emblems of fraternal organizations and for the heartbreakingly small markers of infants and children, which tell you as much about frontier life as any monument.
This is still an active cemetery serving the surrounding community, so tread respectfully and keep to the lanes. Set against the rural Guadalupe County countryside, it makes a fitting, contemplative stop on a back-roads drive through the old settlements between San Antonio and the coastal plain — a place to stand where two communities built one country town together.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Attractions
- Green Acres Golf and Games12.0 mi away
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Related people
- · James Henry Newton
- · Maria Madden Dial
Themes & tags
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