Persons Known to Have Been Buried in de Zavala Cemetery
San Jacinto, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Vice President Lorenzo De Zavala 1789-1836, Emily West De Zavala (no date), Ricardo De Zavala 1835-1906, Minna Wadzick De Zavala (no date), Emily Smith De Zavala 1847-1883, Darwin De Zavala 1872-1881, Edward Theodore De Zavala 1863-1882, Katherine E. De Zavala 1911-1914, Leroy De Zavala 1905-1954, Lorenzo De Zavala III (no date), Sidney De Zavala 1870-1906, General Manuel Fernandez Castrillon died 1836, Frederick Dulitz 1873-1876, Peter Jefferson Duncan 1799-1836, Doctor Dunlap (no date), Willa Folk 1850-1871, Amy Inez Higginbotham 1878-1915, Lillian Marie Higginbotham 1901-1903, Emily De Zavala Jenkins (no date), Thomas Jenkins (no date), Ethel K. Joyner 1909-1912, Katherine S. Joyner 1887-1911, Frederick Nitsche 1794-1863, William Nitsche (no date), Emma De Zavala Singleton 1870-1938, James Singleton 1881-1912, David Thomas 1801-1836, Emily C. De Zavala Weaver 1861-1892, Ethel Gertrude Weaver (no date), Charles D. Wilcox 1873-1909 (recorded-1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground near the San Jacinto battlefield holds the remains of Lorenzo de Zavala (1789–1836), the statesman who served as the first vice president of the Republic of Texas, along with generations of his family. It also received figures caught up in the 1836 revolution, including the Mexican general Manuel Fernández Castrillón, who fell at San Jacinto, and other men who died that pivotal year. The recorded roll of names spans from the republic's founding into the early twentieth century.
Why it matters
The cemetery gathers, in one small plot, both a founding father of Texas and figures from the war that created it—an intimate link to the birth of the Republic of Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The little burial ground near the San Jacinto battlefield belongs to one of the most electric moments in North American history: the birth of the Republic of Texas. In 1836, the sprawling Mexican province of Texas — home to Tejano families, recent Anglo-American settlers, and enslaved people — erupted in revolution, and within a matter of months a brand-new nation declared itself into being on the coastal plains east of what is now Houston.
This was frontier country, humid and half-settled, where bayous met prairie. The people buried here lived in a world of enormous stakes and enormous uncertainty, where a republic could be founded in the spring and its survival still in doubt by summer. That fragility is part of what makes the site so intimate — these were not distant statesmen but neighbors caught up in an experiment that could easily have failed.
The cemetery grew from the household of one of that revolution's leading figures, and it kept receiving the dead — his descendants and their neighbors — for well over a century afterward. So the ground holds not just a single dramatic year but the long, quiet continuation of the families who lived through it.
People & events
At the heart of the roll of names is Lorenzo de Zavala (1789–1836), one of the genuinely remarkable figures of the age. A statesman with deep roots in Mexican political life, he cast his lot with the Texas cause and was chosen as the first vice president of the new republic. That a man of his Mexican background helped lead the founding is a reminder that the Texas Revolution was never simply Anglo against Mexican — it was a tangle of loyalties and convictions. He died in 1836, the very year of the republic's birth, and his family plot became the seed of this cemetery.
Around him lie generations of de Zavalas, their birth and death dates threading from the 1830s deep into the twentieth century — children lost young, elders who lived long lives, a whole family's story compressed into a list of names. The inscription also records Emily West de Zavala, who shares his name and his resting place.
Most striking of all, the ground holds General Manuel Fernández Castrillón, a Mexican officer who died in 1836 — the year of the Battle of San Jacinto fought nearby — along with other men who fell in that same fateful year. Here, in a single plot, a founding father of Texas and an officer of the army he fought against rest within steps of one another.
Its place in the American story
San Jacinto is one of the hinge points of American history. The battle fought near this spot secured Texas independence, and within a decade Texas would join the United States — an act that helped ignite the war with Mexico and ultimately reshaped the entire map of the American West. The republic born here was a short-lived nation that became a giant state.
What gives this cemetery its unusual power is how it collapses that grand story into a few square yards of earth. A founding vice president and a general from the opposing army lie in the same ground. The tidy textbook line between "our side" and "theirs" blurs when you realize the dead of both were laid to rest together, their bones keeping company through the centuries.
And because the burials continue long past 1836, the site quietly insists that history did not stop with the famous battle. The families who made the republic went on living, marrying, burying their children, and growing old — the ordinary human aftermath of an extraordinary founding.
If you visit
Come to this one for reflection rather than spectacle. A memorial cemetery like this rewards slow reading: walk the recorded names and watch the dates move from the revolutionary year of 1836 forward through generations, and you'll feel the passage of an entire family's life against the backdrop of a young republic.
The great advantage of this spot is its neighbor. It sits near the San Jacinto battlefield, so you can pair a few quiet minutes here with the towering monument and museum that mark where independence was won. Read the marker first, then stand at the battlefield, and the founders stop being textbook figures and become people who were buried just over the rise.
Don't expect grandeur at the plot itself — its meaning is in what it gathers, not in any monument. Let the ordinary scale of it land: a vice president, a rival general, and the children and grandchildren of a revolution, all keeping company in the coastal Texas ground where a nation began.
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
- · Lorenzo de Zavala
- · Emily West de Zavala
- · Manuel Fernández Castrillón
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Peter Jefferson Duncan
San Jacinto, TX
Peter Jefferson Duncan, born in New York in 1799, took part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835 and served in the army during the 1836 campaign for Texas independence. He lived out his life in Harris County, where he died in 1870. His marker commemorates one of the volunteers who fought to establish the Republic of Texas.
Lorenzo de Zavala
Houston, TX
Lorenzo de Zavala was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the first vice president of the Republic of Texas. His plank-covered log house near Harrisburg, built in 1829, sheltered the wounded as a hospital after the decisive 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, and it was there that de Zavala died that November.
Within A Few Minutes, Battle of San Jacinto Site
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This marker captures the stunning arithmetic of the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. By General Sam Houston's own report, the fighting left 630 of Santa Anna's soldiers dead, 208 wounded, and 730 captured, along with money, arms, and equipment—while the Texans lost just 9 killed and 30 wounded. Rarely has so brief an engagement proven so lopsided or so consequential.
Site of Battle of San Jacinto, 1836
Houston, TX
On the afternoon of April 21, 1836, near this spot, Gen. Sam Houston's small Texian army formed up to fall upon the much larger Mexican force of Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna. The surprise attack that followed lasted only about eighteen minutes but shattered Santa Anna's army and led to his capture the next day. The victory secured the independence of the Republic of Texas.