Hendrick Arnold Survey No. 59 Colored Burial Ground
Bandera, Bandera County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Freedman and soldier Hendrick Arnold (1804-1849) was awarded land following the Texas Revolution for his participation in the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto. He received six surveys in what was then Bexar county, including this property in Bandera county. Thinking of his family, Hendrick gave land to his father, grandmother and brother, Holly Arnold. Holly Arnold lived on this land with his wife, Mary B. Arnold (d. 1897). Mary is buried in what was known as the Arnold Cemetery on the Holly Arnold Headright Land Grant. Holly’s death and birth records are unknown. Over the years, the cemetery on the Arnold Survey served as a burial ground for area residents. In 1922, one acre of the Hendrick Arnold Survey no. 59 was recorded in deeds as colored burial ground, used primarily by African American families. The first burial in the cemetery was that of John Benson, born in 1885 and died on April 4, 1890. From 1884 to 1944, twelve deaths of African Americans were recorded in county records: John Benson, (unknown) Wellencrane (d. 1890), John Coats (d. 1903), Leonor Benson (d. 1905), Maria Jackson (d. 1912), Baby Cooksey (d. 1917), C.D. Cooksey (d. 1920), Jeff Cooksey, Jr. (d. 1924), Andrew Jackson (d. 1925), Mary Jackson (d. 1925), Everett Robinson (d. 1926) and D.W. Leonard (d. 1944). Many of their birth dates remain unknown. Other burials may exist but after years of neglect, headstones were damaged and potential temporary markers were not found. Burial record research and site surveys have uncovered dozens of unmarked grave sites, a tangible reminder of the pioneers of the area and their descendants. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Hendrick Arnold, a free Black man who fought in the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto, was granted land for his service in the Texas Revolution, including this Bandera County tract. He passed acreage to his family, and over generations the ground became a burial place—formally recorded in 1922 as a colored burial ground used by local African American families. Neglect erased many headstones, but research has recovered dozens of unmarked graves and the names of those laid to rest here.
Why it matters
It honors a free Black veteran of Texas independence and the African American community whose presence on the frontier is too often unrecorded.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This quiet ground in Bandera County holds a history that reaches back to the birth of Texas itself. The land here was granted in the aftermath of the Texas Revolution, in the era of the young Texas republic, when the new government paid its soldiers in the one thing it had in abundance: land. Among those soldiers was a free Black man, and the acreage he received is the root of everything this place remembers.
The span the marker covers is long — from those early republic days through the generations that followed, into the modern era — and it traces how a veteran's land grant slowly became a community's burial ground. That arc runs straight through some of the hardest chapters of American life, including the decades when law and custom segregated the living and the dead alike.
That this was frontier country matters. The African American presence on the Texas frontier is real but thinly documented, its records scattered and often lost. A cemetery like this one, formally recognized only in the twentieth century, is sometimes the most durable evidence that a community existed here at all.
People & events
At the center stands Hendrick Arnold, a freedman and soldier who fought in two of the pivotal actions of the Texas Revolution — the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto — and was awarded land for that service. He received several surveys in what was then a vast county, this Bandera County tract among them. What he did with that land says as much about him as his soldiering: thinking of his family, he gave land to his father, his grandmother, and his brother, Holly Arnold.
Holly Arnold lived here with his wife, Mary, and it is Mary who anchors the site's earliest personal history — she was buried in what became known as the Arnold Cemetery on the family's land grant. Holly's own birth and death records have not survived, one small measure of how easily such lives slipped out of the written record.
Over the decades the family plot grew into a broader burial ground, and in 1922 one acre was formally recorded in the deeds as a colored burial ground, used chiefly by local African American families. County records preserve a dozen names of those buried here between the 1880s and the 1940s — among them John Benson, whose grave was the first, along with members of the Cooksey, Jackson, and other families. Many of their birth dates are simply unknown. Years of neglect damaged or erased headstones, but patient research and site survey have since uncovered dozens of unmarked graves — a tangible reminder of the pioneers and their descendants who rest here.
Its place in the American story
The American origin story tends to remember its founders as a narrow group, but this ground insists on a fuller cast. A free Black man helped win Texas its independence and was rewarded, as other veterans were, with land — a fact that complicates and enriches the familiar telling of how the state was born.
What Hendrick Arnold did next carries its own national weight. For a free Black family in that era, land was more than property; it was security, standing, and a foothold that could be passed down. In sharing his grant with his kin, he was building the kind of Black landholding legacy that was rare, hard-won, and all too often stripped away elsewhere in the country.
The cemetery's later history mirrors the nation's. A separately recorded "colored burial ground" is segregation written into the very earth, and the neglect that followed — toppled stones, lost names, graves gone unmarked — is a pattern repeated at Black cemeteries across America. The recovery effort here, matching names to ground and finding the forgotten graves, is part of a wider national reckoning: the work of restoring to the record the people it was never designed to hold.
If you visit
Approach this as a place for reflection rather than spectacle. It is a burial ground with a long memory and, for many years, few visible markers — so what you are really coming to see is the ground itself and the story it carries, honored now with the recognition of a Historic Texas Cemetery.
Walk gently and let the quiet do its work. Remember that much of what lies here is unmarked; the dozens of graves recovered through research mean that the empty-looking spaces are not empty at all. Reading the names the county records preserved — the first burial, the families who returned here across the generations — is itself a small act of remembrance.
If you are traveling the Bandera area for its better-known frontier and ranching history, make room for this stop as its counterweight. It rounds out the picture of who was actually here on the Texas frontier, and it lets you pay respect to a free veteran of Texas independence and to the community whose presence this ground keeps from being forgotten.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Hendrick Arnold
- · Holly Arnold
- · Mary B. Arnold
Related events
- · Siege of Bexar
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
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