Saint Joseph Catholic Cemetery
Inez, Victoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Catholic church and cemetery were established after 1873 at Gazeta (then 1.5 mi. W) on one acre of land deeded by parishioner Frank Garvel (1837-1921). In 1889 the congregation moved to the new railroad town of Inez, reconstructed their church building (2 blks. NE), and dedicated it to St. Joseph in 1890. In August, 1892, Frank and Anna Obsta (1838-1912) Garvel conveyed four acres here for a new cemetery, and reclaimed the land in Gazeta. In October that year, English immigrant John Finnegan (1827-1892) became the first burial here. The eleven burials at Gazeta--with the family names of Andre, Garvel, Konrad, Kutchka, Letts, Obsta, Ortiz, Rena, Scherer, and Schrobacher--were transferred here in November that year. Subsequent burials further indicate the diverse backgrounds of settlers in Inez. By the turn of the century, the town hosted immigrants of Anglo, Czech, German, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Swiss descent. The burial site of Joseph and Mary Adamski Obsta, Polish settlers at Gazeta in 1858, is not known, but 38 of their descendants are buried here. The family of Czech immigrants Alois (1866-1950) and Rozina Cernota (1852-1949) Andres includes 16 burials of more than 400 marked and others unmarked here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Catholic burial ground traces its roots to the 1870s settlement of Gazeta, where an immigrant congregation first raised a church and cemetery on donated land. When the railroad drew the community to the new town of Inez around 1890, the congregation moved its church and, in 1892, opened this cemetery—soon transferring earlier burials here. Its markers record families of Anglo, Czech, German, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and Swiss descent, mapping the remarkable diversity of South Texas settlement.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a stone census of immigrant America, showing how strikingly varied ethnic communities took root together in a single Texas farming town.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Frank Garvel
- · John Finnegan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Saint Joseph Catholic Church
Inez, TX
Polish immigrants from Prussian-occupied Upper Silesia settled here in 1858, naming their prairie community Gazeta and relying at first on traveling priests for baptisms, weddings, and funerals recorded far away in Victoria. They built a church in 1873, then dismantled and moved it when the railroad drew the settlement to Inez, rededicating it to St. Joseph in 1890. After fire destroyed the frame church in 1963, the congregation quickly built the brick structure dedicated in 1964.
Edna Mexican School
Edna, TX
In the early twentieth century, upheaval in Mexico and Texas's hunger for farm and industrial labor drew many Mexican families north, and their children entered a school system that often segregated them from Anglo pupils. Edna's Mexican School offered only grades one through four for six months a year in a spare wood-frame building; teacher Luna Lucille Lindberg pushed her students toward achievement from 1933 to 1948. The school closed in 1948, the same year the Delgado v. Bastrop ISD ruling struck at the segregation of Mexican American students in Texas.
Shillerville Cemetery
Victoria, TX
Shillerville took root in 1894 when several Czech families settled this stretch of Victoria County, naming the farm community for early settler Jan Shiller. The cemetery's first burial, in 1897, was Rosalie Balcar Jirasek, laid to rest on land given by Josef and Terezie Lesikar — which is why it was first known as the Lesikar or Bohemian Burial Ground. Some of the oldest stones here are still inscribed in Czech, a quiet record of the immigrants who built the place.
Macaroni Station
Edna, TX
Macaroni Station began as a camp and commissary during the building of the New York, Texas & Mexican Railway in the early 1880s. Investor Count Joseph Telfener brought laborers from his native Italy, and the station earned its nickname from them; the railway itself was long called the "Macaroni" line. When landowner Lucy Flournoy had a townsite surveyed here in 1882, it was named Edna for the Count's daughter, and the settlement outlived the railroad's abandoned dream of reaching Mexico.