Old Cemetery on the Hill
San Patricio, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This cemetery is believed to have been used for generations by Indian tribes and Mexican settlers who lived in this area previous to Anglo colonization. Following the establishment of San Patricio de Hibernia in 1830 by empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin, the colonists continued to use the old cemetery on the hill. According to local oral tradition, early graves in the cemetery were marked by wooden crosses and stones bearing Spanish and English inscriptions. Among those interred here are Lt. Marcelino Garcia, who as killed at the battle of Lipantitlan in 1835. Also buried here are soldiers who died in the battle of San Patricio on February 27, 1836; James McGloin, whose grave was never marked; victims of diseases such as scarlet fever; men killed fighting duels; and many early settlers and their descendants. After a new cemetery was consecrated at San Patricio by father Antoine Maury in 1872, the old cemetery on the hill was used infrequently. The old cemetery was neglected for many years until restoration efforts were begun in the 1960's. Some tombstones were destroyed or lost over the years, but the historic graveyard is now maintained. (1990)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On a rise above San Patricio lies a burial ground older than the Anglo town, used by Indian peoples and Mexican settlers before empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin planted their Irish colony of San Patricio de Hibernia in 1830. The colonists kept using the old cemetery, and its graves record the turbulence of the Texas Revolution — Lt. Marcelino Garcia, killed at Lipantitlan in 1835, and soldiers who fell in the Battle of San Patricio in 1836. Empresario McGloin himself lies here in an unmarked grave, alongside settlers lost to scarlet fever, duels, and the ordinary attrition of frontier life.
Why it matters
This hilltop graveyard holds together three peoples — Indigenous, Mexican, and Irish immigrant — at the violent birth of Texas, a rare tangible link to the polyglot origins of the Republic.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The hilltop burial ground above San Patricio belongs to one of the most turbulent and least simple chapters of Texas history — the years when the land was passing, violently, from Mexican to Anglo-American governance. In the 1820s and 1830s this stretch of coastal South Texas was a frontier in every sense: sparsely settled, contested among several peoples, and far from the reach of any strong central authority.
Long before the town existed, the rise itself was already a place of the dead. By tradition it served generations of Indian peoples and Mexican settlers who lived and farmed and died in this country before Anglo colonization ever reached it. When newcomers arrived, they did not clear the old graves away; they simply kept burying their own alongside those already resting there, layering one people's memory atop another's.
The founding of an Irish colony here in 1830 added yet another thread. This was the Mexican government's own policy at work — inviting Catholic empresarios to bring in colonists to populate and hold its northern frontier. The result, on this single hill, was a meeting ground of Indigenous, Mexican, and Irish immigrant lives, gathered together at the very moment Texas was about to be torn apart by revolution.
People & events
The colony of San Patricio de Hibernia — St. Patrick of Ireland — was the work of two empresarios, John McMullen and James McGloin, who in 1830 planted a settlement of Irish Catholic immigrants on this ground. The colonists kept using the old cemetery on the hill, and according to local memory its early graves were marked by wooden crosses and by stones inscribed in both Spanish and English, a quiet record of the two tongues that met here.
Then came the revolution, and the hill received its soldiers. Among those interred is Lt. Marcelino Garcia, killed at the Battle of Lipantitlan in 1835, and here too lie men who fell in the Battle of San Patricio on February 27, 1836. The dates place this graveyard squarely inside the opening violence of the Texas Revolution, when small, bloody engagements across South Texas decided the fate of the region.
The cemetery holds gentler and stranger stories as well. James McGloin, one of the colony's own founders, lies here in a grave that was never marked. Around him rest victims of scarlet fever, men killed in duels, and the many ordinary settlers and their descendants who lived out their lives on this frontier. After a new cemetery was consecrated in 1872, the old hill fell into infrequent use and then long neglect, until restoration efforts beginning in the 1960s recovered and now maintain what tombstones survived.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to imagine the settling of Texas as a simple story of Anglo pioneers moving west, but this hilltop tells a truer and more complicated version. Here, in a single burial ground, three peoples are bound together — the Indigenous inhabitants, the Mexican settlers, and the Irish Catholic immigrants recruited under Mexican colonization policy. That braided origin is the real texture of early Texas, and places that preserve it are rare.
The Irish colony also complicates the familiar national narrative of immigration. These were Catholic newcomers invited by a Mexican government to hold its frontier, arriving before Texas was ever part of the United States. Their presence is a reminder that the American story includes people who came to this continent under other flags entirely, and were swept up in the great changes that followed.
And the soldiers' graves connect this quiet rise to the founding violence of a republic that would soon become a state of the Union. The Texas Revolution was decided not only in famous battles but in dozens of smaller clashes like those at Lipantitlan and San Patricio. To stand among these graves is to stand at one of the many local seams where the map of North America was being redrawn.
If you visit
Approach the old cemetery as a place to slow down and read carefully. Look for the surviving tombstones, and remember that some were lost or destroyed over the long decades of neglect before restoration began in the 1960s. What remains is not a complete record but a rescued one, and that fragility is part of what gives the hill its weight.
Notice the setting itself — a rise above the town, the kind of high ground people across cultures have long chosen to bury their dead. Bring in mind, as you look, that the earliest graves here predate the town, and that the ground beneath you may hold Indigenous and Mexican settlers whose names were never recorded. Not every grave is marked; one of the colony's own founders lies somewhere here without a stone.
For a traveler, this is a contemplative stop rather than a spectacle, and it fits well into a route exploring the birthplace country of the Texas Revolution and the Irish colonies of South Texas. Walk it quietly, let the layered history settle, and treat it as the sacred ground it plainly is — a small hill that holds together the polyglot beginnings of an entire republic.
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
- · John McMullen
- · James McGloin
- · Marcelino Garcia
Related events
- · Battle of Lipantitlan
- · Battle of San Patricio
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Cemetery on the Hill
San Patricio, TX
This hilltop cemetery is believed to have served Native peoples and Mexican settlers long before Anglo colonization reached the area. After Irish empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin founded San Patricio de Hibernia in 1830, the colonists kept burying their dead here, beneath wooden crosses and stones inscribed in Spanish and English. Among those laid to rest are Lt. Marcelino García, killed at the 1835 battle of Lipantitlán, and soldiers who fell at the battle of San Patricio in 1836.
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This monument names the Texan volunteers cut down at and near San Patricio on February 27, 1836, buried the next day by Father Thomas Malloy, along with local sons of San Patricio who perished in the Goliad massacre that March. Among them were Irish-Catholic colonists of the San Patricio settlement caught up in the violent birth of the Texas Republic. A pair of survivors, spared at Goliad through a Mexican colonel's intervention, are remembered here as well.
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Founded in 1830 by empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin as the capital of their Irish colony, San Patricio de Hibernia—named for the patron saint of Ireland—stood as a lonely frontier outpost when the Texas Revolution erupted. On February 27, 1836, General José Urrea's division of Santa Anna's army surprised and overwhelmed a small Texan party under Johnson, killing several and marching the survivors to Matamoros as prisoners. After the Texan victory at San Jacinto the town was destroyed and its people scattered, and this 1936 monument names its early settlers, soldiers, and notable descendants.
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