Glenwood Cemetery
Beeville, Bee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1901, after nearby Evergreen Cemetery had begun to run out of burial space, local undertaker Christopher Rotzien purchased land adjacent to the St. Joseph Cemetery. The same year, the Eeds family purchased plots in the cemetery and Margaret Ann Eeds was interred in April 1901, making her the first person to be buried in Glenwood Cemetery. The land was bought in 1902 by the Beeville Cemetery Association. Notable people buried in the cemetery include the sister of noted Texas author J. Frank Dobie and veterans of various wars beginning with the Spanish-American War. Burials have extended to Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish persons. The cemetery has undergone expansions and renovations from the 1960s and 1970s and continuing through more recent efforts. The original Glenwood Cemetery as it was first purchased measured out to five and a half acres. It was first divided into 120 lots of the dimensions of 40 by 40 feet, and then subdivided into 480 separate 20 by 20 feet lots. The cemetery underwent expansions in later years, gaining ten additional acres in 1920. Today, the cemetery is landscaped and trimmed, containing oak and cedar trees. Concrete, granite, ceramic photographs, and wood have been used in the building of grave markers. Among original intact gravestones are unmarked and undated gravestones. The cemetery is still in use and is managed by the Beeville Cemetery Association.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Beeville's Evergreen Cemetery began to fill, local undertaker Christopher Rotzien bought adjoining land in 1901, and Margaret Ann Eeds became the first burial that April. Taken over by the Beeville Cemetery Association the next year and expanded over the decades, Glenwood grew into a landscaped resting place for Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish citizens, including war veterans and the sister of Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie.
Why it matters
A community cemetery like Glenwood preserves the layered social and religious life of a South Texas town as it grew across the 20th century.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Evergreen Cemetery
Beeville, TX
On land donated in 1859 as Beeville's townsite took shape, this South Texas burying ground was formally purchased by the county in 1862 for use as a public cemetery. Over the following decades neighbors added strips of adjoining land and fenced the grounds, knitting the graveyard into the fabric of the growing frontier community. A 1970 restoration preserved the resting place of the town's pioneer families.
Cook Home
Beeville, TX
John Cook, born in 1846 in a Texas-bound wagon train and a Civil War soldier at seventeen, married Frances Miller in 1866 and with his son helped build the South Texas cattle industry through fine registered Herefords. In 1897 he raised this Victorian house of select long-leaf pine, positioned to catch the Gulf breezes, with every room opening onto a porch and four fireplaces framed by mahogany, maple, and oak mantels.
George Home
Beeville, TX
In 1890, Will H. and Julia George raised this elegant cottage on land Julia inherited from her father, Maj. J.H. Wood, a New Yorker who had come south to fight in the Texas War for Independence before building a cattle empire. Reusing materials from an earlier house on the property, the couple created a home whose finely detailed woodwork made it a center of Beeville's social and cultural life around the turn of the century. Remodeled in 1900, it has passed down through Wood's descendants.
McClanahan House
Beeville, TX
Erected about 1867 near Poesta Creek on the courthouse square, this is Beeville's oldest business building—a pioneer-western structure with southern porches that housed a general store, lodging house, and post office. It was built by G. W. McClanahan, the town's first merchant, who also served as schoolteacher, postmaster, county clerk, innkeeper, and Sunday school superintendent.