Duncan Cemetery
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Also known as Flour Bluff Cemetery, this burial ground has always been open to the public. It was established in 1908 as part of a land purchase made by Edward Sidnery Duncan (1868-1940) and Minerva Ellen Duncan (1877-1921). Earlier burials may exist here, but records show that the oldest documented grave is that of Mrs. N.F. Stigner. Her gravestone, recording her January 3, 1909, death, was stolen many years ago. Veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars are buried here, as are generations of families who have contributed to the devepment of Corpus Christi and Nueces County. Historic Texas Cemetery-2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Also called Flour Bluff Cemetery, this public burial ground was established in 1908 on land purchased by Edward and Minerva Duncan near Corpus Christi. Its oldest documented grave dates to 1909, and among those buried here are veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, alongside generations of families who helped build up Nueces County. It carries the state's Historic Texas Cemetery designation.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a layered record of a Gulf Coast community's ordinary families and its citizen-soldiers across four American wars of the 20th century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- Β· Edward Sidney Duncan
- Β· Minerva Ellen Duncan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Camp Scurry
Corpus Christi, TX
For decades after 1848 the Rio Grande border saw smuggling, rustling, and armed raids, and the Mexican Revolution sharpened fears of attack β especially after Pancho Villa's 1916 raid into New Mexico. Corpus Christi officials, hoping to boost the economy, lobbied to host troops, and in August 1916 General Frederick Funston ordered infantry and the Texas Brigade headquarters to a 200-acre camp named for General Thomas Scurry. Its soldiers drilled under strict routine β and fielded a football team that outscored rivals 432 to 6 β before the site was reactivated to train troops when the U.S. entered World War I.
John Dix
Corpus Christi, TX
Born in Massachusetts in 1796, John Dix packed several American lifetimes into one: a teenage privateer in the War of 1812, a shipwrecked sea captain, a Michigan town founder, and a private in the Texian army during the Texas Revolution. Settling at Corpus Christi, he prospered as a sheep rancher and federal revenue inspector before the Civil War split his family β Dix, a staunch Unionist, was indicted for treason against the Confederacy in 1864. After the war he served as chief justice of Nueces County until near his death in 1870.
U.S. Coast Guard on Mustang Island
Port Aransas, TX
To tame the treacherous Aransas Pass, the government established the first Aransas Life Saving Station on Mustang Island in 1878; when the 1919 hurricane destroyed it, successors carried on the work into the modern era. Woodrow Wilson's 1915 merger of the Revenue Cutter and Life Saving services created the U.S. Coast Guard, whose Mustang Island duties expanded from rescue to hunting enemy saboteurs with canine beach patrols in World War II and, later, to escorting military cargo and inspecting vessels in the War on Terror.
Cementerio San Antonio de Padua
Aransas Pass, TX
By local tradition George Lewis gave half an acre here in the late 1800s to the area's Hispanic families for a cemetery, on the condition that he be buried at its center. Hand-carved stones mark graves reaching back into the 19th century, among them children lost to a 1940 influenza epidemic and veterans of many wars, though wind and rain have worn many illegible. A statue of St. Anthony holding the Christ child, carried across the border from Mexico by a local priest, still watches over the grounds.